so i decided i want to get my technician license and honestly i have no idea where to start. i bought one of those gordon west books at the hamfest a few weeks ago but i kind of just flipped through it and it felt like a lot to absorb all at once. someone at work told me the question pool is public and i should just memorize the answers but that seems kind of wrong? like i want to actually understand what im studying not just pass by guessing. but then again i dont know how much of the electrical theory stuff i actually need to know day to day. anyone have a good method they used when they were prepping for their tech exam, does the gordon west book actually work or is there something better

the question pool being public is totally fine and legal, thats just how amateur radio licensing works in the US, the pool gets updated every few years and the actual exam questions come straight from it so yeah memorizing answers does work. that said i get what you mean about wanting to understand it. what i did was use hamstudy.org which is free and it shows you the questions in a kind of flashcard style but it also tracks which ones you keep getting wrong so you can focus on those. the electrical theory on the tech exam is honestly pretty basic, ohms law and some basic antenna stuff, nothing too crazy. gordon west is fine but i found the hamstudy site faster for actually retaining things. give yourself like 2-3 weeks of 20 minutes a day and you'll be fine, the test really isnt that hard

i passed mine like 3 months ago and just used hamstudy the whole time, never even bought a book. did like 10-15 minutes on my lunch break for maybe 3 weeks and passed with only 2 wrong. the RF safety section tripped me up a little because its kind of tedious but there arent that many questions from it. dont overthink it honestly