so ive had my technician for about 8 months now and honestly i've been mostly doing local repeater stuff and some APRS which is fun but i keep hearing people talk about HF and working DX and it just sounds way more interesting than waiting for someone to hit the repeater on a tuesday night

my question is basically how much harder is the general exam compared to tech, like i studied for maybe 2 weeks for tech and passed fine, is general going to be a whole different level or is it more of the same kind of stuff. i looked at the question pool online and some of it looks pretty intimidating, like the propagation questions and all the stuff about operating procedures i dont really know yet

also is there anything specific i should focus on or just grind the whole pool with hamstudy or whatever. i dont have a ton of time to study, maybe like 30 minutes a night

general is definitely a step up from tech but honestly not by as much as you'd think. the question pool is bigger and yeah some of the electrical theory stuff can trip you up if you're not used to thinking about things like impedance or how a superheterodyne receiver works, but you don't need to actually understand all of it deeply to pass the test, you just need to recognize the right answer

hamstudy is exactly what i used and it works great, just do the practice exams over and over until you're consistently hitting like 85% or better and you'll be fine on test day. the propagation stuff sounds scary but its actually pretty interesting once it clicks, like understanding why 40m works great at night and 10m is all over the place depending on the solar cycle. that stuff starts making sense pretty fast

30 minutes a night for 3 or 4 weeks should be plenty honestly. and once you get that general ticket the whole HF world opens up and you'll wonder why you waited so long. 40 meters alone will keep you busy for years

i went through this exact same thing like 6 weeks ago, had my tech for almost a year and finally just decided to go for it. took me maybe 3 weeks of studying, maybe less. the electrical theory questions are the ones i had to actually look up and understand a bit because just memorizing felt wrong to me but you can totally just memorize them if you want and still pass

one thing i wasnt expecting is how much of the exam is about operating rules and band privileges, like which frequencies you can use as a general vs extra, that stuff. its not hard its just a lot to keep straight. passed with an 85 i think

been on 40m almost every evening since and its honestly addicting, made contacts with a guy in Germany last week just running like 50 watts into a dipole in my backyard. definitely worth doing