so i decided i want to get into ham radio and apparently i need to pass the technician exam first. ive been looking around online and theres like a million different study guides and apps and websites and i honestly have no idea which ones are worth using. a friend at work said just memorize the question pool but that seems like cheating yourself out of actually understanding stuff? i dont know.

anyway i guess my question is, is there a go-to resource most people use or do you just kind of piece it together from different places. also how long did it take you to feel ready to actually sit for the test. i have maybe an hour or so a night to study and i dont want to waste time on bad materials

hamstudy.org is basically the standard answer here, just use that. its free, it pulls from the actual question pool which is what the test is drawn from, and it tracks what you know versus what you keep getting wrong. i studied maybe 3 weeks for maybe 30-45 min a night and passed no problem. your friend isnt totally wrong either, a lot of the questions you will just kind of absorb by repetition even if you dont fully grasp the underlying concept right away, and the understanding tends to come later once you're actually on the air messing with stuff.

the ARRL technician manual is solid if you want actual explanations but honestly for just passing the test its overkill. id say hamstudy, give it 2-3 weeks, do like 5-10 practice exams and if youre hitting 85%+ consistently you're probably fine. the real pool is 35 questions and you need 26 right to pass so theres some room.

i did mine like six months ago and was in the same boat, pretty overwhelmed at first. i ended up using the Gordon West study book because someone on another forum reccomended it and it was pretty easy to follow. it walks through things in a way that actually makes sense instead of just throwing questions at you. i also used hamstudy alongside it. took me maybe a month of casual studying.

one thing i'll say is dont skip the electrical theory questions even if they seem intimidating, theres actually only a handful of them and once you see the pattern in how theyre worded its not bad at all. good luck with it