so I've been interested in ham radio for a while now mostly because my neighbor has a big antenna setup and it looked cool and he told me to just go get my license and join him on the air but I have no idea where to start. like do I need to take a class or can I just study on my own? I looked up the FCC stuff and it was a little overwhelming. is the technician exam hard? I don't have a background in electronics or anything like that, I barely remember anything from high school physics. any advice would be really appreciated, I just don't want to waste money signing up for a test and then fail it

honestly the tech exam is pretty manageable even without any electronics background. the question pool is public, all the actual questions that can appear on the test are available online, so theres no surprises. I used HamStudy dot org when I was studying and just did practice tests over and over until I was consistently hitting like 85% or better, then I went and took the real thing. took me maybe 2-3 weeks of casual studying in the evenings. the exam itself is 35 questions and you need 26 right to pass so theres a decent margin. dont stress too much about understanding every single concept deeply, some of the questions you can just memorize the answer and move on. the electrical theory section trips some people up but even that isnt too bad once you see the same questions a few times in practice.

I just passed mine last month so im basically in the same boat as you were a little while ago. I used the ARRL technician manual and also the hamstudy site that everyone recommends and that combo worked really well for me. one thing I'd say is find a local club because they often run license classes and the instructors can answer questions in real time which helped me a lot with the antenna and propagation stuff I kept getting confused on. also the VE sessions through clubs are usually only like 15 bucks so even if you dont pass first try its not a huge loss, but you'll probably pass