so i passed my technician about 8 months ago and ive been mostly doing 2m/70cm stuff on a couple handhelds and a mobile rig. its been fun but honestly i feel like im hitting a wall, everyone keeps talking about HF and making contacts on 40m and 20m and i want in on that

my question is basically how hard is the general exam compared to tech. i remember tech being not too bad once i just drilled the question pool for a couple weeks but ive heard general has more math and electrical theory stuff which im not great at. is it worth buying a study guide or just do the online question pools again

also like what can i actually do once i get it, i know i get HF privileges but i dont really understand what portions of the bands i get vs extra class. is it a big difference or does it matter

honestly the jump from tech to general isnt as bad as people make it sound. theres some ohms law stuff and a bit about impedance and antennas but if you just use hamStudy or the arrl study guide you'll see the same questions over and over and it clicks pretty fast. i think i studied maybe 3 weeks on and off and passed with room to spare

the band privileges are pretty solid for general. you get most of 40m and 20m which are the two workhorses for domestic and DX contacts. the extra class portions are there but theyre usually the more crowded ends of the band anyway so youre not really missing huge chunks of usable spectrum. i went general and didnt bother going for extra for almost two years and never felt like i was locked out of anything that mattered

just drill the question pool, dont overthink the math sections, and you'll be fine

im in basically the same boat as you lol, just started studying for general last week after being a tech for like a year. the electrical theory questions are a little weird at first but honestly most of the actual math on the test you can just memorize which answer goes with which question without really understanding why. not the best way to learn i guess but it works for passing

one thing i wasnt expecting is theres a decent chunk of questions about operating procedures and stuff like third party traffic rules which are easy points if you just read through them once