so I've been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now and finally decided to just go for it and take the technician exam. problem is I have no idea where to start with studying. I looked up the question pool online and theres like 400+ questions and it's honestly a little overwhelming. someone at work told me to just memorize the answers without really understanding them but that seems wrong? like I want to actually understand what im doing especially the electrical stuff.

I downloaded the ARRL study guide PDF but I dont know if thats enough or if I should also be doing practice tests on top of that. anyone gone through this recently and have tips on what actually worked for them? also how long did it take you roughly, I'm hoping to take the exam in maybe 6 weeks

six weeks is plenty of time honestly, I did it in like three weeks just doing a little bit each night. the thing that helped me most was hamexam.org — you can drill questions by topic which is way better than just going through the whole pool randomly. I spent maybe 20-30 minutes a day on there and by the end I was consistently scoring in the high 80s on the practice exams.

the ARRL guide is decent but I found it a little dry, some people swear by the Gordon West book instead. either way I'd say dont stress too much about fully understanding every single concept right away, some of the antenna theory and electrical formulas will make more sense once you're actually on the air. just get licensed first and then keep learning. the question pool for tech isnt as bad as it looks once you start breaking it down by section

yeah dont let the question count freak you out. a bunch of them are really similar and once you get the core concepts down a lot of the answers just click. the electrical math ones tripped me up at first but theres only like a handful of actual formulas you need and ohms law covers most of it.

one thing I wish someone had told me — pay extra attention to the operating rules and band privileges section, that stuff shows up a lot and its easy to mix up if you havent seen it before. good luck with it