so ive been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now and finally decided to just go for it and take the technician exam. problem is i dont really know how to study for it or what resources are even worth using. i downloaded something called the question pool but its just like 400 questions and i dont know if i should just memorize all of them or actually try to understand the material first.

also some of the questions about like electricity and ohms law and stuff are kind of confusing me, i havent done any of that since high school. is there like a study guide that explains the concepts or do most people just grind through the questions until they remember the answers. i feel like just memorizing without understanding is kind of cheating but also i only have a few weeks before theres a test session near me

any advice would be appreciated, im totally new to all this

honestly the question pool memorization approach works fine for passing the test, dont feel bad about it. the pool is public and the actual exam questions come straight from it so if you can get through all of them a few times youll pass no problem. HamStudy.org is what most people use now, its free and it tracks which questions you keep getting wrong so you can focus on those. i think i spent maybe two weeks on it a few evenings a week and passed with room to spare.

that said if the electrical stuff is tripping you up the ARRL Ham Radio License Manual is pretty decent for actually explaining why things work the way they do. its not super expensive and it walks through the concepts before hitting you with the questions. for ohms law stuff specifically just remember E=IR and you can rearrange it to solve for whatever theyre asking, most of those questions are just plug and chug once you get that down. the exam isnt that bad, way easier than people make it sound

yeah hamStudy is the move, thats what i used. just do the practice exams over and over until you're consistently hitting like 85-90% and you'll be fine on test day. the real exam is 35 questions and you need 26 right to pass so theres actually more wiggle room than you'd think.

one thing i'd say is dont stress too much about fully understanding every single topic before your test date. you can always dig deeper into the stuff that interests you after you get your ticket. i barely understood anything about antennas when i passed and now its like my whole thing. the license is just the door, the learning kind of happens after