so ive been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now and finally decided to just go for the technician exam. problem is i dont really know how to study for it. i downloaded some app but theres like 400+ questions in the pool and i have no idea if i should just memorize all of them or actually try to understand the material or what. a friend told me just hammer the question pool and youll be fine but that seems like cheating somehow? also some of the electrical theory stuff is going way over my head, like i have no idea what reactance is or why it matters. does everyone struggle with this at first or am i missing something obvious

honestly your friend isnt wrong about just drilling the question pool, thats basically what most people do and it works fine for the tech exam. the pool is public so youre not cheating, the ARRL literally puts the whole thing out there. HamStudy.org is what i used and it tracks which questions you keep getting wrong so you can focus on those. took me maybe 2 weeks of like 20 minutes a day before i was passing practice tests consistently.

the reactance and impedance stuff, i wouldnt stress too hard on understanding it deeply just to pass the test. youll pick it up more naturally once you actually start using the radio. just memorize which answers go with which questions for now, the theory can come later when it actually means something to you.

I passed mine last spring and was in the exact same boat. The electrical theory questions are probably like 10% of the exam so dont let them slow you down too much. What helped me was reading the ARRL Tech manual alongside doing practice questions, not the whole book, just the sections where i kept getting stuff wrong. Some of the band plan and operating procedure stuff is actually pretty interesting once you get into it. Good luck, the test really isnt that bad once you start getting comfortable with the question formats.