okay so i've been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now, my neighbor is licensed and he keeps telling me to just do it already. so i finally decided to start studying but honestly i dont even know where to start. i looked up the question pool online and it's just... a lot. like 400+ questions? do i actually have to memorize all of those or is there a smarter way to do this. also i saw some people mention the ARRL study guide and others say just use hamstudy.org and skip the book entirely. is one better than the other or does it just depend on the person. i'm not totally new to electronics, i took a class in high school like 15 years ago so some of the basic stuff isn't completely foreign to me but the regulations and frequency stuff is kind of confusing. anyway just looking for some direction before i waste money on a book i dont need

hamstudy.org is honestly all you really need for most people, especially if you already have some electronics background. the site pulls from the actual question pool and it tracks which ones you're getting wrong so you can focus on those. the way the test works is they pull 35 questions from that pool and you need 26 right to pass, so once you're consistently scoring in the 80s or 90s on practice tests you're probably ready. the ARRL book is fine if you want to actually understand the why behind things, like if you want to understand what's actually happening with like ohms law or propagation rather than just memorizing answers. but plenty of people pass with just the flash card approach and thats totally valid for the tech exam. the regulations section trips up a lot of people at first but honestly once you do enough practice questions the wording starts to click. give yourself like 2-3 weeks of casual studying and you should be in good shape.

i did mine like 8 months ago and just used hamstudy the whole time, took me maybe 3 weeks studying like 20 minutes a day on my lunch break. passed first try with a 91%. the book might be worth it if you want to actually dig into the material but for just passing the test its probably overkill. one thing i'd say is dont skip the questions about operating procedures and the band privileges stuff, i thought id be fine on those and almost got tripped up. also check if your area has a local club doing a license class, mine had a free one and the elmer there was super helpful for the stuff that didnt make sense just reading it off a screen