so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and honestly i mostly just mess around on 2m and 70cm but ive been hearing people talk about HF and it sounds really interesting, especially the idea of actually talking to people in other states or countries without needing a repeater or anything like that

my question is i guess how hard is the general exam compared to tech? i remember the tech exam wasnt too bad but some of the questions were weird. i heard general has a lot of electrical theory stuff and im not great at math. do you actually have to do a bunch of calculations or is it mostly just memorizing the question pool? also is there a good study guide or website people use, i saw some stuff online but wasnt sure what was actually useful vs just garbage

also what HF bands do you even get with general vs what extra class gets, is it worth just going straight for extra or should i not get ahead of myself

honestly the general exam is pretty manageable, i was worried about the same stuff, all the math and electrical theory. but heres the thing, the actual calculations on the exam are not that bad once you see the patterns. like the ohms law stuff and the resonant frequency formulas show up a handful of times and if you just practice those specific question types youll be fine. its not like youre doing calculus or anything

i used ham study dot org to prep and just ran through the question pool over and over until i was consistently passing the practice tests, took me maybe 3 weeks of like 20-30 minutes a night. gordon west also has a book that a lot of people like if you prefer something physical to flip through

as for going straight to extra, i mean you can if you want but the extra exam is noticeably harder and the additional band privileges you get over general are kind of slim for most operating. general opens up a huge chunk of 40, 20, 15, 10 meters which is where most of the action is anyway. id say get your general, actually spend some time on HF, then decide if extra is worth chasing. thats what i did and i dont regret it at all

the math tripped me up at first too but its really just a few formulas and they literally give you the same answer choices every time so after a while you just start recognizing which answer goes with which question lol. the harder part for me was all the band plan and operating rules stuff, like remembering which modes are allowed where on which band, that took more reps to get down

also just fyi once you pass general you can jump on 20 meters and its wild compared to local repeaters, i made my first ever contact with someone in germany like the second day i had my new priveleges