so ive been a Tech for about 8 months now and mostly just been doing local 2m stuff and some APRS but im starting to get curious about HF and people keep telling me to just go get my General already. the thing is i looked at some of the practice questions and some of them are pretty confusing, like the electrical stuff and the propagation questions. i did fine on the Tech exam but this feels like a bigger jump than i expected.

is the General exam actually hard or am i overthinking it? i downloaded the ARRL book but havent really cracked it open yet. mostly just been using ham study dot org and doing random quizzes when i get bored. some of the questions i get right but i have no idea why i got them right if that makes sense. like i just remembered the answer but dont actually understand what its asking.

also once i get my General what can i actually do on HF that i couldnt before, like is it worth it? i have an old ic-7300 my uncle gave me thats just sitting there

honestly the General isnt that bad if you put a few weeks into it. the electrical theory stuff looks scary at first but there really arent that many formulas you actually need and the question pool isnt that huge. i used ham study the same way you are and just kept drilling until i was consistently getting like 85% or better, then went and took the test. passed first try with room to spare.

the propagation stuff is actually pretty interesting once it clicks -- like understanding why 40m is better at night or why 10m goes nuts when solar flux is high, that kind of thing makes you want to actually get on HF and see it yourself. dont just memorize the answers if you can help it, try to actually get why bands behave the way they do.

and yeah with that 7300 sitting there you absolutely should upgrade, that radio is way too good to just collect dust. once you have your General you get big chunks of the HF bands and you can actually work DX, join nets, try some digital modes, all kinds of stuff you just cant do on VHF/UHF. it changed everything for me when i upgraded.

I was in the same spot like a year ago. took me maybe 3 weeks of casual studying to feel ready, prob an hour a day maybe less some days. the math questions freaked me out but honestly most of them you can just learn the pattern for, like ohms law stuff you probably already know and the rest is just plug and chug.

one thing that helped me was watching some youtube videos on the topics i kept getting wrong instead of just re-reading the book. sometimes seeing someone explain impedance or whatever on a whiteboard made it stick better than reading the same paragraph six times