so i've been interested in ham radio for a while now, mostly because my neighbor has this huge antenna setup and it got me curious. anyway i finally decided to just go for it and get licensed but honestly i dont even know where to begin. like is there a specific book i should get or is the online stuff good enough? i've been looking at some websites but theres so much information and i cant tell whats actually useful vs just noise.

also how hard is the test actually? i work full time so i cant spend months studying, realistically how long did it take you guys to feel ready? someone at work said two weeks but that seems fast. and do i need to memorize a bunch of math or is it more conceptual stuff

honestly the technician exam isnt bad at all, i was pretty nervous going in but it ended up being pretty manageable. what i did was just use hamstudy.org every day for like 20-30 minutes, they have the full question pool and it kind of adapts to what you're getting wrong which helps a lot. two weeks is doable if you put in a little time each day, some people knock it out in a weekend but i wouldnt recommend rushing it just because some of the concepts actually stick better if you give yourself a bit of time.

the math stuff is pretty light honestly, theres some ohms law questions and a bit of basic electronics but nothing that should scare you off. if you want a book the ARRL technician manual is fine but i personally didnt use one, just the question pool practice on that site was enough for me. find a local club too because they usually run exam sessions and sometimes do free study nights which is nice when you're just starting out

i just passed mine like two months ago so this is fresh for me lol. i used hamstudy and also watched some youtube videos from a channel called ham radio prep or something like that, they go through the material in a pretty chill way and it helped me understand the why behind some answers instead of just memorizing. the test is 35 questions and you need 26 right to pass so theres actually a decent amount of wiggle room which helped calm my nerves going in