so ive been wanting to get my tech license for like two years now and i finally decided to just do it. problem is i dont really know where to start with studying. i looked up the question pool and theres like 400 something questions and it honestly feels overwhelming. a friend told me to just memorize the answers without worrying about understanding them but that feels wrong to me, like what if i actually want to use the radio after i pass lol

anyway does anyone have a recommendation for a study guide or website or whatever. i tried hamstudy.org for like 20 minutes and it seemed decent but i dont know if thats enough or if i need an actual book. also the electrical stuff is kind of going over my head, the ohms law questions and the stuff about antennas. do i really need to understand all that or is just memorizing the formulas enough to pass

hamstudy.org is honestly all you need to pass the exam, dont overthink it. i used it for maybe a week and a half, maybe two weeks, doing like 20-30 questions a night after work and passed with only a couple wrong. the way it tracks which questions you're weak on is pretty useful. your friend isnt totally wrong either — for some of the more obscure regulatory stuff its basically just memorization anyway because you're not going to intuitively figure out what the FCC says about third party traffic or whatever.

that said for the electrical stuff i actually think understanding it helps you remember it better. ohms law is just V equals IR and once that clicks you can derive the other forms instead of memorizing three separate formulas. there's a guy on youtube, i forget his name, who does a whole series walking through the tech pool and he explains the why behind things which helped me more than just flashcards. the antenna questions are mostly just knowing some basic rules of thumb, half wave dipoles and stuff like that, nothing too crazy at the tech level.

the ARRL handbook for the tech class is pretty good if you want an actual book to hold, my wife got it for me when i was studying and i liked having something physical. but honestly hamstudy and gordon west's book are both popular and people pass with either. gordon west goes through things in a way thats a little more conversational i guess.

dont stress too much about deeply understanding every single thing for the exam itself. once you have the license and you're actually on the air the practical stuff clicks way faster than studying ever made it. i barely understood what SWR meant when i passed but after a few months messing with antennas it made total sense. just get through the test and then learn by doing, thats kind of the whole point of the tech license anyway