so ive been a Tech for about 8 months now and mostly just been messing around on 2m and 70cm with my local repeaters which is fine but honestly im starting to feel like im missing out on the whole HF thing. everyone at my club keeps talking about working DX and 40m and whatever and i kind of just nod along like i know what theyre saying lol

anyway i picked up a copy of the ARRL General study guide and flipped through it and honestly some of it looks pretty intimidating. the electrical theory sections especially, like i remember doing some of this in school but that was a long time ago. is there a certain part of the exam that trips people up the most? and is HamStudy actually worth using or should i just stick with the book

also not sure if this matters but im not planning on buying an HF rig right away, i just want the license first so i can use the club station. does that change anything about how i should study or what i should focus on

honestly the General exam is not that bad if youve already got your Tech. a lot of the concepts overlap and the question pool isnt as scary as it looks once you start grinding through it. i used HamStudy exclusively, didnt even open a book, and passed with like a 90 something. just do the practice exams over and over until youre consistently hitting 85% or better and youll be fine on test day

the electrical theory stuff like calculating impedance or reactance, yeah thats the part that makes people nervous but you really dont need to deeply understand all of it for the exam. some of it you can kind of pattern match once youve seen the questions enough times. that sounds lazy but it works. the propagation and band plan questions are actually pretty interesting once you get into HF operating and youll be glad you know that stuff later

and no it doesnt matter that you dont have a radio yet, the exam doesnt care about any of that. good luck, it took me like 3 weeks of casual studying to feel ready

just upgraded myself like two months ago so pretty fresh on this. the part that got me was the regulations stuff, like the operating privileges for each band and which modes are allowed where. i kept mixing things up. the tech pool doesnt really go into that as deep so it felt new

club station is actually a great way to start on HF before you buy anything, wish i had done that more instead of just jumping into buying a used radio that turned out to have some issues but thats a different story