so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and honestly ive been having a blast on 2m and some 70cm stuff but everyone keeps telling me i need to get my General so i can actually get on HF and do real DX and whatnot. im not opposed to studying but i guess my question is how different is the General exam from the Technician one? like is it way harder or is it mostly just more of the same stuff about regulations and electronics?

also i keep hearing people talk about privileges on 40m and 20m and i have no idea what that even means in practice. like do i just... pick a frequency and start talking? and what kind of radio do i even need, i have a baofeng and a mag mount but thats obviously not gonna cut it for HF i assume. sorry if this is a really dumb question im just trying to figure out where to start

not a dumb question at all, most of us went through the exact same thing. the General exam is a bit more involved than the Tech but honestly if you passed the Tech you can definitely pass this one too. theres more question pool material covering things like HF propagation, some electrical theory, and a fair amount of operating practices. the pool is publicly available so i'd just grab the ARRL General study guide or use hamStudy.org and grind through the questions for a few weeks.

as for the privileges thing, basically as a General you get access to most of HF but not all of it — Extra class opens up a bit more on some bands. 40m and 20m are probably where youll spend a lot of time starting out, 20m especially is great for daytime DX because the propagation can be really good during the solar cycle. and yeah youre gonna need an actual HF rig, a Baofeng wont do anything for you there. something like a used Icom 718 or a Yaesu FT-450 would be a solid starting point, they come up on QRZ classifieds and the usual places for reasonable money. dont worry about having a perfect antenna setup right away either, a wire dipole up even 20 feet will get you on the air and youll be surprised how far you can work.

i just did this like two months ago, went from tech to general and the exam wasnt bad at all. i used hamStudy every night for maybe 3 weeks and felt pretty ready. some of the electrical theory tripped me up at first but once you see the same questions enough times it clicks. passed with only a couple wrong.

the HF thing is honestly kind of overwhelming at first ngl, i got on 40m the first night and just listened for like an hour before i worked up the nerve to call anyone lol. but people are generally pretty welcoming especially if you say its your first HF contact