so ive been a Tech for about 8 months now and mostly just been doing local VHF stuff and some APRS but i keep hearing people talk about HF and honestly it sounds really cool, talking to people across the country or whatever. my buddy at the club said the General exam is not that bad but i dunno, some of the stuff i looked at online seemed pretty confusing especially the electrical theory parts.

i guess my question is how long did it take you to study and what did you use to study with. i tried looking at the question pool but there are like 450 questions or something and i dont even know where to start. also once i actually have the General ticket what do i need to get started on HF, like do i need a completely different radio or can some of the handhelds do HF? sorry if thats a dumb question im still pretty new to all this

honestly the General exam isnt that scary once you just dig in. i used HamStudy.org and just did like 20-30 questions a day for maybe 3 weeks and passed with a pretty comfortable margin. the electrical theory stuff tripped me up too at first but you dont really need to understand all of it deeply, a lot of it you can just kind of pattern match from doing the practice tests over and over. the questions about operating privileges and band plans are actually pretty straightforward once you look at a chart.

as for HF radio, yeah you basically need a different rig, the little handheld VHF/UHF handitalks dont do HF. you'd want something like an HF transceiver, there are some decent used ones on QRZ.com classifieds or eBay. a lot of people start with something like a used Icom or Yaesu from the 90s or early 2000s and they work totally fine. you'll also need an antenna which is kind of a whole other rabbit hole but a simple wire dipole can get you on the air pretty cheap. dont overthink the gear until you get the license

just passed my General like two months ago so this is fresh for me. took me maybe 2 weeks of studying, i used the Gordon West book AND hamStudy both because the book helped me actually understand stuff not just memorize it. the electrical theory was the part that took the longest for me too but honestly on the actual exam it wasnt as brutal as i thought it would be.

one thing nobody told me before i upgraded was that having the General ticket doesnt mean youll immediately be able to have great conversations on HF lol, propagation is a whole thing and some days 40 meters is great and some days you cant reach anyone. but thats part of what makes it fun i guess. welcome to the rabbit hole