so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and i mostly just mess around on 2m and occasionally hit a repeater when im traveling. started thinking about upgrading to general because honestly the HF stuff looks way more interesting and i keep hearing people talk about 40m and 20m like its a whole different world.

anyway i grabbed the ARRL general study guide and im going through it but some of this stuff is pretty dense. like the electrical principles section is making my head spin a little. i did okay on the tech exam just memorizing stuff but im getting the feeling the general pool is harder to just brute force memorize through. or maybe im wrong and people still just memorize it?

also what HF privileges do i actually get as a general vs what extra has, i looked it up but the band chart confused me. like can i actually work most of 40m or is it just a little sliver? and is 40m a good band to start on for someone whos never really done HF

the exam is definitely more involved than tech but its not as bad as the study guide makes it look. i just used HamStudy dot org and did practice tests over and over for like 3 weeks, maybe 20-30 minutes a day, and passed without really fully understanding everything i was answering. the electrical stuff does trip people up but you dont need to deeply understand it, you just need to recognize the right answer when you see it. the question pool isnt that huge.

as for HF privileges, generals get a pretty solid chunk of 40m, roughly 7.175 to 7.300 for phone which is where most of the ragchewing happens anyway. extras get the lower portion down to 7.125 but honestly youll have plenty to work with as a general. 40m is a great starting band, especially at night when it opens up and you can hear stations from all over the place without much effort. just be prepared for the noise floor if you're in a suburban area, that was the thing that surprised me most when i first got on HF.

i literally just did this like two months ago lol, went from tech to general and yeah 40m is where i started too. honestly the exam wasnt that bad i was overthinking it. HamStudy practice tests til you're consistently hitting like 85% or better and you'll be fine on test day. the actual exam felt easier than some of the practice ones weirdly.

one thing nobody told me is that once you pass you still gotta wait for your license to show up in the FCC database before you can actually operate on the new privileges, took about 4 days for me which felt like forever