so ive been a Tech for about 8 months now and honestly i mostly just use my HT for local stuff, 2m repeaters and the occasional APRS stuff. but ive been hearing people talk about HF and 40m and it sounds really interesting especially the idea of actually talking to people further away than just my county lol

anyway i started looking at the General exam pool and honestly it seems pretty overwhelming. like theres stuff about propagation and feed lines and operating procedures i dont really know and some of the electrical theory questions are kind of rough. i did fine on the tech exam but that felt more manageable somehow

is there a good way to study for this or do i just grind through the question pool? i downloaded hamstudycom and been doing the practice tests but im only getting like 65-70% right now which i know isnt passing. does the actual exam have the same questions from the pool or what? any tips from people who recently upgraded would be great

yeah the question pool is exactly where the exam questions come from, they pull them directly from it so if you know the pool you know the exam. thats honestly the whole trick with these tests. hamStudy is good but i found that just drilling it over and over for like 2-3 weeks got me from where you are to consistently hitting 85-90% on the practice tests and then i went and sat for it

the electrical theory stuff, honestly dont stress too hard about fully understanding all of it. like some of the impedance and the reactance questions i just kinda memorized the answers without totally getting the why behind it and i still passed fine. if you actually want to understand it gordon west's book breaks it down pretty well but its not strictly necessary to pass

once you get your General ticket and get on 40m at night you're gonna wonder why you waited this long. i worked a station in brazil on my first week with like 100 watts into a dipole strung up kinda janky in my backyard. the bands are decent right now too with the solar cycle where it is

I just upgraded like two months ago so this is pretty fresh for me. Took me honestly about three weeks of studying maybe 20-30 minutes a day. The propagation stuff clicked for me once I just started listening on HF before I even had privileges, like just tuning around on a receiver or an SDR and you start to hear what people mean about band conditions and skip and all that

the exam itself felt easier than the practice tests somehow, maybe because i was nervous and overstudied but either way i passed first try with a few to spare. just keep grinding hamStudy and you'll get there