so ive been a general for about three years now and i keep telling myself ill study for the extra but never actually do it. anyway i finally bought the ARRL extra class manual last month and started going through it and honestly some of this stuff is way over my head. like i get the basic operating stuff and the band privileges make sense, but when it gets into the math for like filter design and the transmission line theory and all the impedance matching stuff... i dunno. i passed the general without really understanding half of it and now im wondering if i need to actually understand all this or if i can just memorize the question pool again.

also is the extra exam actually worth it just for the privileges or is there more to it than that. i mostly do HF SSB and a little bit of digital, not really into contesting or anything super technical. just feels weird to have the highest license and not really know what im doing i guess

honest answer? you can absolutely pass it with memorization just like the general. the question pool is public same as always and if you just grind through it on HamStudy or wherever you'll probably be fine. i did mine that way back in 2019 and passed first try. the theory is nice to understand but the exam doesnt really test if you truly understand it, it tests if you can pick the right answer.

that said the privileges are genuinely useful even if you dont think they are right now. the extra class portions of 40 and 75 meters are way less crowded, and 60m has some stuff too. if you ever get into cw or weak signal stuff the extra segments on 15 and 17 are nice to have. i think once you have the ticket you start exploring more just because you can, at least thats what happened with me

i just passed mine two weeks ago so pretty fresh. the impedance and filter stuff does look scary at first but a lot of the actual exam questions are honestly not that bad once you see them in context. theres like maybe 5 or 6 questions where you really need to work through the math and the rest is just knowing the concept. dont stress it too much