so ive been a tech for about two years now mostly doing VHF and some APRS stuff and i finally decided i want to actually get on HF and talk to people further than like 50 miles lol. signed up to take the General exam next month at a local club session and honestly i dont even know where to start studying. i looked at the question pool and it seems like a lot of it is electrical theory which i was never great at in school. the propagation stuff seems interesting though and i think i can get through that ok.

is the HamStudy website actually good for this or should i get a book? i saw some people mention the ARRL handbook but that seems like way overkill for just passing the test. also curious how much of the HF stuff i kind of just need to understand vs just memorize to pass because some of those electrical formulas are intimidating. anyone gone through this recently have tips?

HamStudy is honestly all you need to pass, i went from zero to General in like 3 weeks using just that site. the way it tracks which questions you keep getting wrong is really useful. for the electrical formulas just learn ohms law and how to rearrange it and you can figure out most of the math questions from scratch instead of just memorizing answers, that helped me a lot more than trying to brute force the whole pool.

the propagation section is genuinely interesting once it clicks, stuff about which bands do what and why is actually useful knowledge once you get on HF and start chasing DX. good luck with it, General opens up a ton

Get the Gordon West study guide not the ARRL one, its cheaper and more focused on actually passing the test rather than teaching you everything about everything. Nothing wrong with the ARRL material but its a lot if you just want to get your ticket upgraded. I used Gordon West when i upgraded years ago and was fine.

One thing nobody tells you is that once you pass General the real learning starts because now you have to figure out which end of an HF rig is which and what antenna you can actually put up at your place. Went through all that after i upgraded and the exam felt like the easy part looking back. What bands are you thinking about getting into first? 40 meters is usually a good starting point, pretty forgiving in terms of propagation and theres always activity.