ok so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, like probably a year of just watching youtube videos and lurking on forums like this one, and i finally decided i actually want to go through with getting licensed. but honestly im kind of overwhelmed about where to start. theres the technician exam obviously but i dont even know what study materials are actually worth using vs just noise. someone at work mentioned the ARRL book but then someone else said just use hamstudy.org and dont bother with books at all. also how hard is the test really? i did fine in school but that was a long time ago and i havent really done anything with electronics or radio stuff in years. any advice would be appreciated, i just dont want to spend months studying for something i could have knocked out in a few weeks

hamstudy.org is honestly all you need for the technician. i spent maybe two weeks doing practice questions on there every evening, like 20-30 minutes, and passed with a pretty comfortable margin. the question pool is finite and the actual exam questions come directly from it so theres no surprises. that said the ARRL book isnt bad if you actually want to understand why things work the way they do, which i think pays off later when youre messing with antennas and wondering why your SWR is weird or whatever. but strictly for passing the test, just drill the questions. find a local club too if you can, they usually hold exam sessions pretty regularly and some of them do free study nights which helped me a lot just to have someone to ask dumb questions to without feeling judged

the tech exam really isnt that bad. most people overthink it. i think i studied for like 10 days and i already had zero background in electronics. there are 35 questions and you need 26 right, so the pass threshold is pretty forgiving. hamstudy is what i used too, though i also printed out the question pool and read through it a couple times which sounds old fashioned but it worked for me. one thing i'd say is dont ignore the electrical safety and RF exposure questions, some folks skim those and they do show up. once you pass tech youll probably want to go for general pretty quick because it opens up so much more of the HF bands and thats where a lot of the interesting stuff happens. some people just do a cram session and take both exams on the same day at the same session, which you can do if you feel ready