so i passed my technician back in march and ive been mostly doing 2m and 70cm stuff but honestly its getting a little boring and i keep hearing people talk about HF and working DX and all that and i want in on it. been looking at the general class question pool and some of it looks pretty intimidating especially the electrical stuff and the propagation questions.

my question is basically how long did it take you guys to feel ready for the general exam, i studied for tech for maybe 2 weeks using ham study dot org and passed no problem but general feels like a bigger jump. also is there stuff i actually need to understand or can i just memorize my way through it like i kind of did with tech. and once i pass what should i expect on HF, like do i need completely different equipment or can i use something relatively cheap to get started

honestly it took me about 3 weeks of casual studying, maybe 30-40 minutes a night. the electrical formulas tripped me up at first but once you get ohms law down and understand how it scales the rest kind of clicks. propagation was actually the most interesting part for me because it started making real world sense once i could hear the bands actually doing what the books described.

dont stress too much about memorizing everything perfectly, a lot of it sticks when you start actually operating. hamstudy is fine, i also used the gordon west book which some people think is old fashioned but i liked having something physical to flip through. the jump from tech to general isnt as scary as it looks, the question pool is bigger but a lot of it overlaps conceptually with what you already know.

for HF gear to start out, plenty of people swear by a used icom 718 or a yaesu ft-450, you can find them in decent shape for a few hundred bucks. wire antennas are cheap and work great so dont feel like you need a big tower setup to have fun on 40m or 20m right away

i just upgraded like two months ago so this is pretty fresh for me. the exam itself wasnt bad, i think i missed like 4 or 5 questions and still passed easy. the math looks scary but theres really only a handful of formulas they actually test you on and they come up enough in practice exams that you just kinda memorize them whether you want to or not lol

the HF thing is a whole different world though i wont lie. my first time actually hearing a pile up on 20m i had no idea what was going on, everyone was talking over each other and i couldnt figure out who the dx station was even calling. takes some getting used to but thats half the fun i think