so my neighbor got his license last year and basically convinced me to try it out and now im trying to figure out how to study for the technician exam. i downloaded a bunch of stuff but honestly its kind of overwhelming. like i found the question pool pdf on the arrl site or maybe it was the fcc site i cant remember but theres like 400 something questions and i dont know if i should just memorize all of them or actually try to understand the material. also someone told me to use hamstudy.org but then another person said to get the arrl tech manual. do i need both? i feel like im overcomplicating this but i just want to pass the first time and not have to retake it

hamstudy.org is honestly all you need to pass if passing is the goal. just run through the practice tests every day for like two weeks and youll start recognizing most of the questions. the pool repeats a lot and the actual exam pulls 35 questions from it so you'll see familiar stuff. the electrical theory parts tripped me up at first but once i got ohms law down the rest kind of clicked. i wouldnt stress buying the book unless you actually want to understand the background behind everything, which isnt a bad thing but its not required to pass

I'll second hamstudy but also want to say don't completely skip understanding the material. I passed my tech just memorizing answers years ago and then when I got on the air I had no idea what half the stuff on my radio meant. Ended up having to go back and learn it anyway. That said if you're short on time the question pool approach works fine, the exam pulls directly from those questions and nothing else so there are no surprises. One thing that helped me was doing the practice tests until I was consistently hitting 80 percent or better before I scheduled the actual exam session. Gordon West also has a study book that some people swear by, more conversational than the ARRL one if the dense technical writing puts you to sleep.