so ive been a general for about 3 years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the extra exam. like i mostly just do HF and some 2m stuff, nothing super exotic. a buddy at my club keeps telling me the extra portions of 40 and 80 arent that crowded and thats reason enough but i dunno.

the theory stuff is what makes me nervous honestly. i took a look at the question pool a while back and some of that filter design and transmission line theory stuff looked pretty rough. i passed general without too much trouble but extra feels like a different level. anyone else feel that way going in? did you find the actual math showed up a lot or is it mostly just memorizing the answers to the pool questions like general was

honest answer? the question pool study method still works for extra, theres no way around it. yeah there's some pretty dense stuff in there about things like reactance and impedance matching and the odd question about vacuum tube biasing for some reason, but you dont need to actually understand all of it to pass the test. that said i found that actually working through the math on stuff like LC circuits made it stick better and i retained more of it after the test which has actually been useful.

the extra class HF privileges are genuinely nice if you operate CW at all, the extra segment on 40 is a lot quieter than the general portion most nights. whether thats worth grinding through the exam depends on what you actually do i guess. it took me maybe 6 weeks of using the HamStudy app before i felt ready and i passed with a couple wrong, nothing crazy.

i just passed mine last month and the thoery wasnt as bad as i expected. some of the questions about digital modes and the emission types stuff is actually pretty interesting once you get into it. the filter stuff did trip me up a few times in practice but by the time i sat for the real exam it was mostly fine. go for it