so ive had my technician for about 2 years now and mostly been doing 2m/70cm stuff, some aprs, helped out with a couple public service events. been thinking about going for general lately mostly because i want to get on HF and actually talk to people further than the next county over lol

my question is kind of dumb but what actually changes when you get general? like i know you get HF privileges but i dont really understand which bands or which parts of the bands you can use vs what extra class gets. also how hard is the exam compared to tech? i felt like the tech exam was pretty easy but i hear general has a lot more math and electrical theory stuff which honestly scares me a little because that was never my strong suit

been looking at the gordon west book and also hamstudy.org, anyone have opinions on which is better or if theres something else i should use? just trying to figure out how long i should give myself to study before i go take it

general isnt as bad as people make it out to be honestly. yeah there's more theory than tech but if you just grind hamstudy.org for like 2-3 weeks doing the practice exams every day you'll be fine. i think i studied maybe 10 days before mine and passed with only a couple wrong. the question pool isnt that big and you'll start seeing the same questions repeat pretty quick.

as for what you get, general opens up big chunks of 40m, 20m, 15m, 10m which is where most of the DX action is anyway. extra gets you a bit more on the edges of those bands plus 60m and a few other things but honestly general is plenty to have a ton of fun on HF. i went like 8 months on general before i even thought about upgrading and worked like 40 countries in that time so dont let anyone tell you that you need extra before you can do anything interesting

The math in the General pool is mostly Ohm's law stuff and some basic impedance calculations, nothing that should trip you up too bad if you just memorize the formulas. Honestly I'd say hamstudy is better than the book just because it tracks which questions you're getting wrong and focuses on those. The Gordon West book is fine but it's a lot of reading and some of it feels like overkill for just passing the test.

One thing nobody told me before I upgraded -- once you actually get on HF with even a simple wire antenna it kind of changes everything. I put up a 40m dipole the week after I passed and just sat there spinning the dial for like an hour listening to SSB contacts from stations all over. Took me a while to actually key up because it felt different than 2m somehow, like more intimidating. Anyway just go take the exam, worst that happens is you fail and you can retake it same session usually depending on the club running the VE session.