so ive had my tech license for about two years now and mostly just been doing 2m and some 70cm stuff, a little APRS here and there. been thinking about going for General so i can actually get on HF but honestly the exam scares me a little. like i heard there's a lot of electrical theory and i was never great at math in school.

does anyone have advice on how long it actually takes to study if you're starting basically from scratch on the HF stuff? i tried looking at the question pool online and some of it looks okay but then theres stuff about feed line impedance and propagation modes that i dont really understand. is the gordon west book still the go-to thing or is there something better now. also once you pass do you get privileges right away or do you have to wait for it to show up in the FCC database first

honestly it's not that bad, i was in the same boat last year. i used ham study dot org almost exclusively and just drilled questions every night for maybe 3 weeks, probably an hour or so before bed. the electrical theory questions are a little annoying but you can get away with memorizing the formulas even if you dont totally understand the underlying math, at least for passing the test. ohms law and a few resonance formulas is really the worst of it.

the propagation stuff is actually kind of interesting once you get into it, like learning why 40m works so well at night for domestic contacts vs 20m being more of a daytime DX band. that part clicked pretty fast for me. as for privileges, yeah you have to wait for the FCC ULS database to update before you can legally operate on the new bands, usually takes a day or two but sometimes faster. your VE session will usually tell you to check it before you key up. good luck, seriously just start doing practice exams and youll know when youre ready

the gordon west book is fine but i'd honestly just use the hamstudy or hamexam sites, that's what most people do now. the book feels a bit dated. thing is the actual exam questions come straight from the published pool so if you can consistently pass practice tests you're going to pass the real thing, that's just how it works.

one thing i'd say though, dont just memorize and move on if you actually want to use HF. like understanding why a dipole cut for 40m is about 66 feet will actually help you when you're trying to set something up in your backyard and nothing is making sense. same with impedance matching, if you ever run into SWR issues it helps to not be totally lost. the license is one thing but actually getting on HF and having it make sense is a different project. 20 and 40 meters is where i'd start once you're on the air, lots of activity and pretty forgiving bands to learn on.