so ive had my technician for about two years now mostly just doing local 2m stuff and some APRS but i keep hearing people talk about HF and honestly it sounds way more interesting than i thought it would be. been thinking about upgrading to general for a while now but keep putting it off because the exam sounds intimidating

is it actually that much harder than the tech exam? i remember the tech one being pretty straightforward but i also studied for like three weeks before taking it. the general pool looks way bigger when i scroll through it and theres a lot of stuff about propagation and operating procedures and some electrical theory that goes over my head a little. like i get ohms law fine but some of the more advanced circuit stuff i dont really understand

anyone have tips on how to study or how long it took them to feel ready? also curious what HF privileges you actually get with general vs having to wait for extra class, dont want to do all this work and find out i can only use like a tiny slice of the bands

honestly its not that bad. i went from tech to general in about six weeks of casual studying, maybe 30-40 minutes a night using ham study dot com and just drilling the question pool over and over. the propagation stuff clicks pretty fast once you actually start reading about it a bit, and the electrical theory questions are mostly just memorizing formulas rather than deeply understanding them, at least for the exam.

as far as privileges go you get a pretty solid chunk of HF access. 40 meters is probably where most people start out and general class gets you a good portion of it, same with 20 meters which is where a lot of the DX action happens. you wont have everything extra class gets but honestly for a newcomer to HF its more than enough to keep you busy for years. i didnt bother with extra until like three years later and by then i actually understood why i wanted those last little slices of spectrum

just take the test, worst case you fail and retake it, its like 15 bucks or whatever

im in basically the same boat as you actually, tech for 18 months and just started looking at the general pool last week. the electrical theory part is what threw me off too. some of the questions about impedance and reactance feel like they came out of an engineering textbook which is a bit much

someone in my local club told me to just use the Gordon West book along with the question pool and not overthink it. havent taken it yet but thats my plan for the next month or so. would be curious to hear how it goes for you if you end up taking it soon