so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has a setup and showed me some stuff and i got hooked. i looked online and theres like a million different study guides and apps and i honestly dont know which ones are actually worth using versus just being garbage. do i need to memorize the entire question pool or is there some logic to it that makes it easier to understand? also how hard is the actual test, ive heard some people say it's super easy and others say they failed it a couple times before passing so im not sure what to expect. i think theres a local club that does testing but i havent contacted them yet

ham study dot org is what basically everyone uses these days, its free and it just drills you on the actual question pool over and over until you're scoring consistently above 80 or so and then you're probably ready. the tech exam honestly isn't that bad, it's 35 questions and you need 26 right which gives you a decent margin for the stuff you just cant figure out. some of it is pure memorization like the band privileges and a few formulas but a lot of the electrical theory questions make more sense once you just think about what the words mean. i passed first try after maybe two weeks of doing practice tests during lunch breaks. reach out to that club, the VEs are usually pretty relaxed about it and some of them will even give you pointers before the session starts

i failed my first attempt lol, not gonna lie. i thought i could wing it after watching a couple youtube videos. second time i actually used the hamstudy app and just grinded practice tests for like ten days straight and passed easy. the questions on the real test looked almost exactly like what i had been practicing so dont overthink it, just do a lot of practice tests and you'll be fine. the math questions scared me but theres really only a handful of them and they show up pretty predictably