so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor does it and i finally decided to just go for it and get my license. im trying to figure out the best way to study for the technician exam but theres so much stuff out there i dont even know where to start. i downloaded the question pool from the arrl website i think but its like 400 questions and i just stared at it for a while and closed it lol. is there a specific study guide people like or do most folks just memorize the question pool? i heard you can kind of just brute force it by memorizing answers but that seems like it might bite me later if i actually want to understand the stuff. anyway just looking for what actually worked for people who went through this recently

honestly hamstudy.org is what got me through it, i spent maybe two weeks just doing practice exams on there every evening and by the end i was consistently hitting 85-90% and felt pretty good going in. the site tracks which questions you keep getting wrong and kind of focuses on those which helped a lot. you dont have to read the whole question pool front to back, that would put anyone to sleep. some people swear by the gordon west study guide which breaks things down into plain language if you want actual explanations instead of just drilling answers. for the tech exam i think either approach works fine but yeah if you want to actually operate and understand whats going on later, picking up at least some of the concepts helps. the electricity and antenna sections clicked pretty quick for me once i just watched a couple youtube videos on basic ohms law stuff

hamstudy is the right answer but i'll add -- dont stress too much about fully understanding every single question on the first pass. there's some regulatory stuff in there like part 97 rules and band privileges that just kind of needs to be memorized and thats fine, you'll learn the why of it later when youre actually on the air. took me maybe 3 weeks studying like 20 minutes a night and passed with room to spare. the question pool is publicly available and the actual exam questions come straight from it so there really arent any surprises