so ive been a tech for about two years now mostly doing 2m and some satellite stuff and i finally decided its time to just go for General so i can get on HF. i ordered the ARRL handbook but honestly its kind of overwhelming and im not sure if thats even the right study material for the exam itself or if its more of a reference thing.

i downloaded the HamStudy app which seems decent but some of the questions about like... impedance matching and the electrical theory parts are just going over my head. i passed the tech exam pretty easily but this feels like a bigger jump than i expected. is there a certain section i should focus on more or is it pretty evenly spread out across the question pool? also not sure how long most people take to study for this, i dont want to rush it but i dont want to drag it out forever either

The ARRL handbook is definitely more of a reference book, not really a study guide for the exam. What you probably want is the ARRL General Class License Manual, thats the one thats actually written around the question pool. I used HamStudy too and honestly if you just grind through it until youre consistently hitting like 85% or better on the practice tests you'll be fine on the real thing.

The electrical theory stuff tripped me up too but a lot of it you can kind of learn to recognize the right answer without fully understanding the math behind it, which i know sounds bad but thats kind of how these exams work. The operating procedures and regs sections were way easier for me than i expected. Give yourself maybe 3-4 weeks of studying a little bit each day and you should be in good shape. The HF privileges alone are worth it, 40m at night is a completely different world than 2m.

yeah hamstudy is what most people use now, just keep doing practice exams over and over. i think i studied for maybe 2 weeks before i felt ready. the impedance and propagation questions are a little weird at first but they repeat a lot so you start to just remember them. good luck, General is totally worth it