so ive had my Technician for about 8 months now and mostly been doing 2m/70cm stuff with my HT and a slim jim i hung out the window. its fine but i keep hearing people talk about HF and working DX and honestly it sounds like a lot more fun than repeater ragchews. no offense to anyone lol

anyway im starting to look at the General exam and honestly the question pool looks kind of intimidating. theres a lot of stuff about propagation and operating procedures and some electrical theory that i dont fully remember from the tech exam. like the part about reactance and impedance i remember being confused by that the first time around too. is it actually harder or does it just look worse than it is? and how long did people study before feeling ready

also i guess my bigger question is once i actually have the General what can i realistically do on HF without spending a ton of money, i dont have a big antenna setup or anything

honestly the General pool isnt that bad once you sit down with it. i used HamStudy and just drilled questions every day for maybe 3 weeks, probably 20-30 minutes a night, and passed with a comfortable margin. the theory stuff like reactance and all that — you dont need to deeply understand it, a lot of people just learn to recognize the right answer from seeing it enough times. not saying thats the best way to learn the hobby but for passing the exam it works fine

the HF thing without a big setup is totally doable by the way. i started on 40m with a random wire thrown over a tree and a used Yaesu FT-891 i found on QRZ classifieds. made my first SSB contact into Europe about two weeks after upgrading. the bands do a lot of the work for you if you catch conditions right. 40 at night especially is pretty forgiving for modest antennas

i just upgraded like 6 weeks ago so pretty fresh on this. the exam felt maybe a little harder than Tech but not dramatically, the stuff that tripped me up was more the operating rules and band plans than the actual theory. like knowing which portions of the bands Generals can use vs Extra, that kind of thing. make sure you know that cold because theres definitely questions about it

as for HF on a budget, look into end fed half wave antennas, you can build one pretty cheap and they work surprisingly well. thats what im using rn