so i've been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and it got me curious. i looked it up and apparently you need a license to transmit which makes sense i guess. but there's like three different license levels and i dont really know which one to go for first or what the test is even like. is it multiple choice? do you need to know morse code still? i saw something about the technician license being the entry level one but then someone on reddit said you should just skip to general. i have no idea what any of the frequency stuff means yet so im probably starting from zero here. any advice on where to actually study would be helpful, like is there a book i should buy or is online stuff fine

okay so first thing, no morse code requirement anymore, they dropped that years ago so dont worry about that. technician is definitely where you want to start, ignore whoever told you to skip to general, you'll thank yourself for building up the knowledge in order. the question pools are all publicly available which is kind of nice because the actual test questions come straight from that pool, no surprises.

hamstudy.org is honestly all you need to pass the technician exam, just do practice tests over and over until you're consistently hitting 85% or better and you'll be fine. the real test is 35 questions and you need 26 right to pass. some people like the ARRL technician book if they want something more in depth but i passed just using hamstudy without buying anything. there's also hamradioprep which some people swear by but i never used it personally.

find a local club too because they usually run VE sessions pretty regularly and sometimes they do license classes that walk you through everything. worth checking the ARRL website to find clubs near you.

i just did this like four months ago so pretty fresh for me. i used hamstudy dot org mostly and just drilled practice tests every night for maybe two weeks. honestly the technician test wasnt that bad, alot of it is common sense stuff and basic safety, the electrical theory parts tripped me up a little but nothing crazy. i think i studied maybe 10-15 hours total before i felt ready.

one thing i'll say is dont stress too much about fully understanding every single question, some of it you just kind of memorize and the understanding comes later when you actually start using the radio. good luck with it