so ive been a general for about two years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the extra. like i mostly do HF and some digital stuff, occasionally get on 40m SSB. the thing is i looked at some of the practice questions and honestly some of that theory is pretty intense. the stuff about impedance matching networks and filter design and all the operating privileges differences... im not sure how much of it i actually need to know vs just need to memorize to pass the test.

does the extra actually open up a lot more spectrum or is it kind of marginal depending on what you do? i know about the CW sub-bands and the phone segments but in practice do you actually find yourself needing those extra slices of spectrum often? would appreciate hearing from people who actually went through it and whether they felt like it was worth the study time

honestly for me the extra portion of 40m phone alone made it worth it. during contests that lower segment is way less crowded, its almost noticeable how much easier it is to find a clear frequency. the theory stuff yeah some of it is stuff you'll never touch again after the exam, like i havent thought about the exact formula for a chebyshev filter since i passed but some of the other stuff like transmission line theory and antenna stuff actually did help me understand what im doing a bit better when im setting up. i used the hamstudy app and just ground through it over about 6 weeks, wasnt that bad. the extra cw sub-bands are kind of a non-issue if you dont do cw obviously but having the full phone priveleges on 75/80m is genuinely useful if you do any nets or ragchewing

I went back and forth on this for way longer than I should have, probably over a year just kept putting it off. What finally pushed me was wanting to be able to volunteer as a VE and also just kind of... not having that thing in the back of my head that I hadnt finished it yet. The advanced theory sections are harder than general for sure but if you understand the concepts rather than just memorizing you'll retain more of it. Some of it like the filter Q stuff and the transmission line equations actually came up when I was troubleshooting some feedline issues I was having, so it wasnt totally useless. I'd say just do it. Worst that happens is you dont pass the first time which is not a big deal at all.