so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, mostly because a neighbor of mine has this huge antenna setup in his backyard and i got curious and he told me about it. anyway i looked it up and theres like three different license levels and study guides and practice tests and i honestly dont know where to begin. do i need to know morse code? someone told me you dont anymore but i wasnt sure. and how hard is the technician test actually, like is it the kind of thing where you can study for a week and pass or does it take months. i dont really have a math background so that part worries me a bit. any advice would be appreciated, just feeling a little lost on where to even start

dont stress about it, the technician exam really isnt that bad. no morse code required anymore, hasnt been for years. the test is 35 questions and you need to get 26 right, and the best part is the entire question pool is public so you already know every possible question that could show up before you even sit down.

honestly the easiest way to do it is just go to hamstudy.org and start running through practice questions every day. like 20-30 minutes a day for a couple weeks and most people pass no problem. there is some basic math, mostly ohms law stuff, but the site kind of walks you through it and after a few repetitions it clicks. i studied for maybe 10 days before my first exam session and got a 32 out of 35. the ARRL handbook is great but its way more than you need just to pass the tech exam, id save that for later once you actually have your ticket and want to go deeper.

find a local club too if you can, they usually host exam sessions and sometimes do free study nights. your neighbor probably knows where the nearest club meets.

yeah what he said, hamstudy is basically all you need. i passed mine like three months ago and was super nervous about the math too but its really not bad, most of it is just memorizing formulas and they kinda tell you what to plug in. the hardest part for me was the band plan stuff honestly, remembering which frequencies you can transmit on as a tech. just keep doing practice tests until you're consistently hitting 80% or above and you should be fine on test day