so ive been a Tech for about two years now and mostly just been doing 2m and some 70cm stuff with my HT and a base antenna i threw up in the attic. its been fun but honestly im getting a little bored and everyone keeps telling me i should upgrade to General so i can get on HF. i listened to some guys ragchewing on 40m the other night with my buddy's radio and it sounded pretty cool, lots of DX and just random conversations happening all over the place.

my question is how hard is the General exam compared to Tech. i remember the Tech exam wasnt too bad but i also studied for like 3 weeks straight. is General a lot more technical or is it mostly just more rules and regulations stuff? i downloaded the question pool but theres a lot in there about things like feed line loss and propagation and some of the electrical theory stuff is going over my head a little. any tips on where to start or what study materials actually work? im not in a huge rush but id like to take the test before summer if i can

honestly the General exam isnt that much harder than Tech, just more of the same kind of stuff. i used HamStudy.org and just drilled questions every night for like two weeks while watching tv. the electrical theory sections look scarier than they are, most of the math questions you can just memorize the answers without really understanding the formula. the propagation stuff is actually pretty interesting once you get into it, you start to understand why 40m is great at night and 10m goes nuts during high solar flux and all that. just go through the question pool a couple times and youll be fine. the hardest part for me was the band plan stuff, keeping track of which frequencies you get as a General vs what you already had as a Tech.

I upgraded last spring after sitting on my Tech for almost four years and wish I had done it sooner. The exam itself was manageable, I used the ARRL General Class book which goes into more depth than just flash cards but I think that helped me actually understand what I was doing when I got on HF instead of just passing a test. One thing nobody told me was that even after you upgrade you still gotta think about what equipment you need since most HTs obviously wont do HF, so factor in the cost of a radio and an antenna because that adds up fast. But once you get on 20m and actually make a contact somewhere across the world on your own radio its a completely different feeling than repeater stuff, worth it for sure.