so ive been a Tech for about 8 months now and mostly just been doing local stuff on 2m and 70cm, some repeaters, a little simplex. but ive been listening to the HF bands on a buddys rig and man it sounds amazing, heard some guy in japan come through on 20m like he was down the street.

anyway im thinking about upgrading to General but im kind of intimidated by the exam. the Tech test wasnt too bad but i keep hearing the General has a lot more theory stuff like impedance and propagation and all that and im not great at math. is it actually that hard or am i overthinking it? and like what would i actually be able to do once i pass that i cant do now? i know its more HF but im fuzzy on the specifics of which bands and stuff

honestly dont stress it too much. the math on the General exam is pretty straightforward, theres some ohms law stuff and a bit on decibels but nothing you need a calculator for if you just memorize the formulas. i was in the same boat as you, worried about all the theory and it turned out fine. i used HamStudy.org and just drilled the question pool for like 3 weeks, maybe 20-30 minutes a day while commuting.

as for what you get -- the big one is 40m and 20m phone privileges, which is where most of the action is for general class. you get chunks of those bands but not the whole thing, Extra class guys get a little more room especially on 20m cw portion. but honestly General is plenty to get on the air and have a real good time with HF. you can work a lot of DX, get into nets, contest a bit. the bands youll care about most are probably 40m for domestic and nighttime stuff and 20m for DX during the day when propagation cooperates

im literally studying for it right now lol, also upgrading from Tech. the propagation questions tripped me up at first but once you read a little about how the ionosphere works it kind of clicks and then the questions make more sense instead of just memorizing answers blindly. still doing that too but it helps to understand it a little