so ive been a Tech for about 8 months now and mostly just been doing local 2m stuff and some APRS. i keep hearing people talk about HF and it sounds really cool but honestly the General exam looks kind of intimidating when i look at the question pool. like there's a ton of electrical theory stuff in there that i dont really remember from school.

i guess my question is how long did it take most people to study for it and is there stuff on the exam that you actually need to know to operate or is it more like memorize and forget type stuff. also does passing General actually give you enough HF privileges to do something useful or do you need Extra for the good stuff

honestly the General exam isnt that bad once you start going through the question pool. i used HamStudy.org and just did like 20-30 questions a day for maybe 3 weeks and felt pretty comfortable. the electrical theory stuff looks scarier than it is, a lot of it is just recognizing formulas and picking the right answer even if you dont fully understand the math behind it.

and yeah General gets you plenty of HF to work with. you get big chunks of 40m, 20m, 15m, 10m, and a few others. 20m alone could keep you busy for years. Extra opens up the edges of those bands which matters more for contest operating or when the bands are packed, but for getting started and actually making contacts General is more than enough. my first HF contact was on 40m like two days after i got my General and it was a guy in Germany which blew my mind compared to hitting the local repeater.

took me about a month of casual studying, maybe less. the Technician exam felt harder to me at the time because everything was new, General you already know some of the basics so it clicks faster than you think it will. the propagation questions tripped me up a little but after reading about how skywave and the ionosphere works it made more sense. just do practice tests until youre consistently passing and youre probably ready.