so ive been a Tech for about 2 years now and mostly just been doing 2m/70cm stuff, some APRS, helped out with a few local nets. i keep hearing people talk about HF and how much better it is once you get your General but honestly the whole process of studying for another exam feels kind of overwhelming and im not even totally sure what i'd be getting out of it that i dont already have.

like i know i'd get HF privileges but which bands exactly? i've looked at the band chart thing and it's kind of confusing with the different license segments. and is the General exam a lot harder than Tech or about the same? someone at the club told me the electrical theory gets way more involved but another guy said it wasnt that bad if you just use the question pool. i dunno who to believe at this point

also do i need to do anything with the FCC after i pass or does the VE team handle all that

honestly man just do it, the General exam is not nearly as scary as people make it out to be. yeah theres some extra theory, like you'll see questions about impedance matching and some propagation stuff that wasnt on Tech, but if you grind through HamStudy.org for a few weeks you'll be fine. i think i studied maybe 3 weeks on and off and passed no problem.

as for HF privileges, as a General you get decent chunks of 40m, 20m, 15m, 10m and a few others. 20m is probably where you'll spend most of your time starting out, there's almost always something going on there. 40m is great in the evenings for domestic stuff. the Extra class guys have slightly more of each band but honestly General gets you plenty to play with.

and yeah the VE team submits everything to the FCC electronically now, you'll get an email when your license shows up in the ULS database, usually within a day or two. just dont transmit HF until you see it in there.

im in basically the same boat, been a Tech for like 18 months and just signed up to take the General next month at a hamfest. the question pool thing is real, a lot of the actual exam questions are pulled directly from the published pool so if you know the pool you're in decent shape. i've been using an app called Ham Radio Prep or whatever, its fine. some of the electrical theory questions are a bit wtf at first but they kind of explain the concepts in the app too.

what got me motivated was finally hearing some DX on a friends HF rig and realizing i was just sitting there listening and couldnt do anything about it lol