so ive been a Tech for about two years now and honestly i feel like ive hit a ceiling with just 2m and 70cm. been messing around with a buddies HF rig and now im totally hooked on the idea of getting on 40m and 20m myself. problem is i keep putting off studying for the General exam because honestly i dont even know where to start or what to expect difficulty wise compared to the Tech exam.

the Tech exam felt pretty manageable once i went through the question pool a few times but ive heard General has a lot more about propagation and like electrical theory stuff which makes me nervous. is there specific sections i should focus on or is it better to just grind through the whole pool? also wondering how long people typically studied before feeling ready. i work full time so my study time is kind of limited to evenings and weekends.

any advice appreciated, just dont want to show up and fail it twice like i did with my drivers license test lol

honestly the General pool isnt as bad as people make it sound. the electrical theory stuff can look scary but most of it is the same concepts from Tech just gone a little deeper. if you understood ohms law and basic circuits for Tech youre not starting from zero.

what worked for me was just doing HamStudy.org every day for like 20-30 minutes. they track which questions you keep missing and hammer those. i think i studied maybe 3 weeks before i felt solid and passed with only a couple wrong. the propagation stuff actually got interesting once i started understanding why 40m goes long at night and stuff like that, made it feel less like memorizing and more like actually learning something useful.

the part that tripped me up was some of the operating procedures and the band plan questions, just stuff i hadnt thought about much as a Tech who mostly just did repeaters. worth paying attention to those sections.

just passed mine last month so pretty fresh in my memory. the exam itself felt pretty similar difficulty to Tech if im being honest, maybe slightly harder but not dramatically so. i used the Gordon West book and also did the practice tests on QRZ which i thought were decent.

one thing i wasnt expecting is that once you pass you can actually operate HF on General privileges immediately, like before your license even shows up in the ULS database if a volunteer examiner signs your temporary cert. so dont wait around thinking you need the paper license first. get on the air as soon as you pass, thats half the fun of upgrading