so ive been a tech for about a year and a half now and honestly i've been mostly doing 2m and some 70cm stuff with my HT and a slim jim in the attic. its been fun but i keep hearing people talk about HF and working dx and all that and i think i want to try it. my buddy W4something told me to just go for the general upgrade but im not sure how hard the exam is compared to the tech one.

the tech exam honestly wasnt that bad once i went through the question pool a few times on hamStudy but i heard the general has a lot more about like propagation and operating procedures and some electrical stuff that goes over my head. also the regulations part seems way more complicated. is there stuff on there about like phone privileges and which bands you can operate on vs extra class? i dont really understand where the band splits are for general vs extra on like 40m or 20m.

anyway just wondering if anyone has taken it recently and how they felt about it, and also what resources they used. im not in a huge rush but maybe want to take it in a few months

honest answer - it's not that bad if you already sat through the tech pool. the general pool is bigger and yeah some of the electrical theory questions are a step up, like you'll see stuff about impedance matching and some antenna theory that you might not have seen before. but its not crazy. i used hamStudy the same way you did for tech, just drilled the questions every day for maybe three weeks and passed with a few wrong answers to spare.

the band privilege stuff is worth actually understanding though rather than just memorizing, because once you're on HF you'll want to know where you can actually transmit without accidentally wandering into extra-only territory. on 20m for example general gets phone starting at 14.225 and extra gets down to 14.150, so if you're just spinning the dial and land somewhere in that chunk you technically cant transmit there as a general. the ARRL band plan chart is worth printing out and staring at for a bit. once it clicks it stays with you.

what part of the electrical theory is tripping you up? some of it you can kind of brute force memorize the answers without actually understanding the math and still pass, which isnt ideal but it gets you on the air which is where the real learning happens anyway

i literally just passed my general like three weeks ago after being a tech for two years so good timing on your question lol. i was nervous about it too but honestly the hardest part for me was the regulations stuff not the theory. like remembering which emission types are allowed where and the third party traffic rules and all that. the electrical questions i just kind of memorized without fully getting it and that worked fine for passing.

one thing i'd say is dont sleep on the propagation section. i thought it'd be boring but once i started reading about how 20m and 40m actually behave at different times of day i got genuinely interested and it made me want to get on HF even more. now i'm saving up for a used IC-7300 or maybe a Xiegu G90 if i want to spend less and the whole thing has kind of snowballed for me