so ive been a tech for about two years now mostly just doing 2m and some 70cm stuff with my HT and a slim jim antenna in the attic. i got into ham radio originally because of a local ARES group and honestly i really enjoy it but ive been hearing more and more people talk about HF and it sounds really cool especially the idea of just being able to talk to people across the country or even other continents without any repeater infrastructure needed.

anyway i downloaded the question pool for General and started going through it and some of it is fine but then there's sections on like propagation and the electrical stuff like calculating impedance and resonant frequency and honestly it kind of feels like a lot. im not an engineer or anything, i work in landscaping so none of this is stuff i use in my day job. did anyone else feel overwhelmed going from tech to general or does it eventually click? and is there any particular study resource that helped, i know everyone says ham study or the ARRL book but just wondering what people actually used

also semi related but once i do get my General what HF bands am i actually going to have access to right away because i remember reading something about tech already having some HF priveleges but i never really looked into it

honestly the general exam is way more approachable than it looks at first. i remember sitting down with that question pool thinking there was no way i was going to memorize all this but the thing is you really dont have to understand every single formula deeply, you just have to recognize the right answer when you see it. like for the impedance calculations and stuff, if you just drill the practice questions enough your brain kind of just learns the pattern. took me maybe 3 weeks of studying maybe 20-30 minutes a day and i passed with only a couple wrong.

ham study dot org is genuinely what i used and its free and it just drills you on questions until you know them. the ARRL general book is good if you actually want to understand the why behind things which i do recommend eventually but you dont need it to pass the test.

as for HF privileges once you get General you get big chunks of 40m, 20m, 17m, 15m, 12m, 10m and also 60m with some restrictions. and yes Techs do get a small slice on 10m for phone and some CW privileges on a few bands but its pretty limited. once you upgrade youll immediately see how much more room there is to operate. 20m especially is just always busy in a good way, you can find someone to talk to almost any time of day.

I upgraded last spring after being a tech for like 4 years and I honestly wish I had done it sooner. The electrical theory stuff tripped me up too but what helped me was just watching some youtube videos on the basic formulas, there's a few guys who explain Ohm's law and the LC circuit stuff in a way that actually makes sense for non-engineers. Once you get the concept even loosely the questions stop feeling so random.

One thing nobody told me before I upgraded was that after you pass you can actually start operating on HF immediately once your license is in the ULS database, you dont have to wait for a paper license or anything. I was on 40m the same evening I passed the exam which was pretty surreal honestly, made my first contact with a guy in Missouri while sitting in my car in the parking lot of the VEC session location using a buddistick on the roof of my car. not exactly ideal but i was too excited to wait.