ok so i've been interested in ham radio for like a year now but every time i try to figure out how to actually get licensed i just end up down a rabbit hole and close the tab lol. there's technician, general, extra... do i need to do them in order? and where do people actually study for this stuff, i found some website called hamstudy or something but i dont know if thats legit or what the actual test is like. my buddy at work has his ticket and he said it wasnt that hard but he also passed like 15 years ago and i dunno if anything changed. any advice appreciated, im just kind of lost on the whole process

yeah hamstudy.org is exactly what you want, thats the one pretty much everyone uses now. and yes you do have to go in order, Tech first then General then Extra, cant skip ahead. the Technician pool isnt too bad honestly, its 35 questions out of a pool of like 400 or so and you need 26 right to pass. most people spend a couple weeks just drilling questions on hamstudy and they're fine. the site will tell you when you're consistently scoring high enough, just keep at it until you're hitting like 85% or better and you'll probably be ok on test day.

for finding an actual exam session look up your zip on the ARRL website, they have a list of upcoming VE sessions. some clubs do them pretty regularly. also some places do online testing now through groups like ARRL VEC or Laurel VEC if thats easier for you. Laurel ones are free which is nice. good luck, its really not that scary once you just commit to taking the test

i just got my tech about 3 months ago so this is pretty fresh for me. i used hamstudy like the other guy said but i also watched some of the Ham Radio Crash Course videos on youtube just to actually understand the material instead of pure memorization. some of the electrical theory stuff was going over my head just reading questions cold so having someone explain it helped. took me about 3 weeks of studying maybe 20 mins a night. test itself felt pretty manageable, few questions surprised me but nothing crazy. good luck