so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and mostly just been doing local 2m stuff with my HT, some APRS here and there. a buddy at my club keeps telling me to just go ahead and take the general exam already and i finally ordered the gordon west book like two weeks ago.

been going through it but honestly some of the stuff about HF privileges is kind of confusing me. like i get that i get access to parts of the HF bands but i dont really understand which parts i can use on like 40m or 20m once i pass. also the question pool stuff about electrical principles is kind of rough, i never took physics or anything so the ohms law and reactance questions are tripping me up a bit. is that stuff actually going to matter when im operating or is it just exam stuff

also how long did it take people to actually feel ready to take the exam, im not sure if im overthosing this or what

the band privilege thing confused me too at first but once it clicks its pretty simple. basically as a general you get big chunks of the popular HF bands but the lower portions (the ones closer to the bottom of the band) are reserved for Extra class. on 40m for example you can operate phone starting around 7.175 and up to 7.300, techs dont get any of that at all except a tiny CW slice. 20m is similar, generals get most of it but Extra has a sliver at the bottom. the ARRL band plan chart is honestly the easiest way to see it visually, just google it and itll make way more sense than trying to read it in text.

as for the electrical theory stuff, yeah you do need to know it for the exam but in day to day operating you mostly dont think about it consciously. that said understanding impedance and stuff like that actually does help when youre troubleshooting antenna problems or figuring out why your tuner is acting up. i wouldnt skip it, just try youtube for the basics, there are some good short videos that explain reactance way better than most books do.

took me about 3 weeks of studying maybe 20-30 mins a day and i felt ready. dont overthink it, just run through the question pool on hamradiooprep or qrz practice exams until youre consistently hitting 80 percent or better and youre probably good to go.

honestly just use hamstudy.org and grind the practice tests, thats basically all i did. the actual exam questions come directly from the published pool so if youre getting them right on the practice site youll get them right on the real thing. i probably studied for like 2 weeks and passed no problem. the math questions are annoying but there are only a few of them and if you memorize the formulas you can usually work through it even if you dont fully understand why it works that way

the HF thing is the best part though, once you get your upgrade in the system you can just fire up on 40m and start listening. thats how you really learn what the bands are doing anyway