so ive had my tech license for about 8 months now and honestly ive been mostly just doing 2m and some 70cm stuff, some local repeaters, did a little DMR which was cool. but im starting to get curious about HF and everyone keeps telling me to just go get my General already. my question is how hard is it compared to the tech exam? i felt like the tech exam wasnt too bad but i definitely had to study for it like 2-3 weeks. is the General pool a lot bigger? and is there a bunch of math involved because i remember there being some formulas on the tech that i kind of guessed my way through lol. also is it worth it to just go straight for Extra or is that overkill for someone who doesnt even have an HF rig yet. i dunno just trying to figure out if this is worth the time before i go buying a radio i cant fully use anyway

honestly the General isnt that much harder than Tech, at least thats how i felt when i did it. the question pool is bigger yeah but a lot of it is stuff you kind of already know or can figure out with common sense if youve been doing any reading about ham radio at all. the math stuff is there but its not like calculus or anything, mostly ohms law and some decibel stuff and a few propagation questions. if you use HamStudy or the ARRL study guide you should be fine in a few weeks of casual studying. the one area that caught me off guard was the regulations section, there's more of it than on tech and some of the band plan stuff gets a little specific.

as for skipping to Extra right away, i wouldnt bother unless you're really motivated. get the General first, get on HF, figure out what you actually want to do, then decide if Extra makes sense. Extra opens up a few more slices of the bands but for most people just starting HF, General privs are plenty to keep you busy for a long time.

im in kind of the same boat actually, been a tech for like a year and just started studying for General last week. what im finding is the electrical theory stuff goes a little deeper than tech but not by a crazy amount. the part thats actually taking me the longest is memorizing which frequencies i get access to on which bands because there's a lot of it and it all kind of blurs together after a while. someone on here told me to just focus on 40m and 20m since thats where most of the action is for new HF ops anyway so maybe dont stress too much about memorizing every single band segment perfectly.