so ive been a general for about two years now and honestly i use maybe 20% of the privileges i already have. but theres part of me that keeps thinking i should just go ahead and get the extra. mostly because i hate the idea of there being parts of the bands i cant touch, you know? the 20m extra portion especially bugs me during contests when everything sounds packed and im stuck just above it.

my question i guess is how bad is the theory on the extra exam. i remember the general had some stuff that was pretty out there but i mostly memorized my way through it. is the extra the same kind of thing where you can just hammer the question pool or is it actually stuff you need to understand to pass. some people ive talked to say the filter theory and the amplifier questions are rough, others say if you just use hamstudyorg you'll be fine in like a month. im not an engineer or anything, i work in logistics, so advanced electronics isnt exactly my wheelhouse

honestly the extra pool is bigger and some of the questions are genuinely harder to brute force because if you dont understand the concept at all the wrong answers can look really plausible. like the questions about filter cutoff frequencies or the ones about transmission line stuff — you can memorize them but if you see a slightly different version of the wording you might second guess yourself. that said plenty of people with no engineering background pass it just fine on hamstudy. i think i spent maybe six weeks going through the pool every night for like 30-40 minutes and passed first try. the oscillator and amplifier stability questions tripped me up a few times in practice but it clicks eventually.

the extra segments are worth it imo especially on 40 and 75 meters where things get really crowded. also cw privileges open up if thats your thing

im in basically the same boat as you lol, been a general for almost three years and keep putting it off. started going through the question pool last month and some of it is definitely confusing but not impossible. the filter stuff i actually found interesting once i watched a couple youtube videos explaining the theory behind it, made the questions make more sense instead of just guessing. anyway dont let the math heavy looking questions scare you off, a lot of them are the same formula just with different numbers plugged in