so ive been a Tech for about 8 months now and i mostly just do 2m and some 70cm stuff locally, got into APRS a little bit too. but ive been reading about HF and i think i want to get into that, maybe try to make some contacts outside the country eventually.

anyway i ordered a copy of the ARRL General study book but its kind of overwhelming, like theres a lot about electrical theory and propagation and stuff i dont really understand yet. im using HamStudy to do the practice questions too but some of them i just memorize without really understanding why the answer is correct and that bugs me.

my main questions are basically -- how hard is the actual exam compared to Technician, and is it worth trying to understand all the theory or can you just learn the question pool and pass? also once i have my General ticket what HF bands do i actually get to use and is there anything i need to buy right away or can i just listen for a while first. sorry if these are obvious questions just trying to figure out where to start

honestly the General exam felt about the same difficulty as Tech to me, maybe slightly harder but not by much. the question pool is bigger but if you're already doing HamStudy every day for a few weeks you'll be fine. i wouldnt stress too much about understanding every single piece of theory, some of it like the exact formulas for calculating impedance or whatever you can kind of just memorize the pattern of the answer and move on. that said the propagation stuff is actually pretty interesting once it clicks and it'll help you actually use HF effectively so thats worth putting some effort into.

as for bands, General opens up big chunks of 40m, 20m, 15m, 10m and some others, 20m is probably where you'll spend most of your time starting out if you want to work DX. you can absolutely just listen for a while first, thats actually a really good idea. get a feel for how contacts work before you jump in. you dont need to buy anything to pass the exam obviously, and if you already have a radio that does HF great, if not theres plenty of time to figure that out after you have the license in hand

just passed my General like two months ago coming from Tech same as you, the thing that helped me most was watching some youtube videos on the stuff i didnt get from the book. like when i read about reactance and inductance in the ARRL book my eyes kind of glazed over but theres a few guys on youtube who explain it way better with visuals and it just made more sense. took me maybe 6 weeks of studying on and off and i passed with a few wrong, cant remember exactly how many.

one thing nobody told me is that after you pass and your call updates in the FCC database it takes a day or two sometimes so dont panic if you pass the exam and try to check your license online and its still showing Technician