so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and got me curious. i looked it up online and apparently theres like multiple licenses? technician, general, extra? im not sure which one i need to get first or if i can skip straight to a higher one. also how hard is the test actually, i took the practice tests on one of those websites and got like 60% which i know isnt passing but i only studied for maybe an hour. do i need to know morse code for any of these or is that old news now. any advice would be great im kind of lost on where to even start

you gotta go in order, cant skip to general or extra without passing technician first. the good news is tech is pretty manageable, most people can pass it in a few weeks of casual studying. the question pool is public which is a huge deal — the actual test questions come straight from that pool so if you just grind through all of them on hamstudy.org you'll be fine. i used that site and was consistently hitting 85-90% after maybe a week of doing practice exams every night for like 20-30 minutes.

and yeah morse code hasnt been required since 2007 so dont worry about that at all. once you get your tech license you'll have access to a ton of VHF and UHF stuff which is a good place to start anyway, lots of local repeaters to get on and talk to people. the elmers on those repeaters are usually pretty willing to help new folks out.

honestly i was in the exact same boat like 8 months ago lol. i used the gordon west technician book which some people swear by but honestly hamstudy.org ended up being way more useful for me just because i could do it on my phone while waiting around. the tech test is 35 questions and you need 26 right to pass so its not as brutal as it sounds. i failed my first attempt by two questions which was annoying but passed the second time no problem. just keep hammering the practice tests until youre consistently in the 80s and youll be good