so ive been a tech for about two years now and finally decided to just go for it and upgrade to general. been using hamstudyorg and the arrl book and honestly most of it is clicking but there are some sections where im just blanking completely. the electrical theory stuff isnt too bad since i went through it for tech but some of the HF propagation questions are throwing me off, like i understand the basic idea of skywave and ground wave but when it gets into the specifics of which bands behave how at different times of day im getting mixed up. also the license privileges chart is kind of a lot to memorize, like which portions of which bands you get on phone vs cw vs digital.

is there a good way to remember all that or did you guys just kind of brute force memorize it with the practice tests? also once i actually pass and get my HF privileges, what should i even start with? i have a baofeng obviously lol but i dont have an HF rig yet so i might be getting ahead of myself here. just want to know what im walking into i guess

the band privileges thing honestly just kind of sticks after you do enough practice questions, dont stress about trying to memorize the chart directly. the pattern starts to make sense after a while, generals get the lower portions of the phone segments and extra gets the upper edges basically. just keep hammering the practice tests and itll click. hamstudy is what i used and i passed first try with like a week of studying.

for the propagation stuff, 40 meters is your friend for getting started on HF, especially in the evenings. 20 is great during the day when the bands are open. if you dont have a rig yet dont worry about it, just pass the test first and then figure out the gear. you can always find a used radio on qrz classifieds or radioreference forums for not too much. a lot of people start with something like an older icom or yaesu and just run a wire antenna in the backyard and honestly that gets you on the air just fine

i was in the exact same spot like six months ago lol. the propagation questions were the ones that got me too. what finally helped me was just watching some youtube videos about how the ionosphere actually works, once i had the visual in my head the questions made way more sense than just trying to read about it. there are a few hams on youtube who do really good explainers for this stuff.

and yeah the privileges chart is annoying but after a few dozen practice tests you just kind of know it without really knowing how you know it if that makes sense. good luck on the exam, its not as bad as it looks