so ive been a tech for about two years now and mostly just been doing 2m/70cm stuff with my local club and some satellite passes when the weather is decent. been thinking about upgrading for a while but kept putting it off because honestly the tech exam felt hard enough at the time lol

anyway im starting to study for General now and i guess my main question is how much harder is the actual exam compared to tech? like the pool has more questions obviously but is the material itself way more complicated or is it more of the same kind of stuff just more of it. im going through the ARRL General manual but some of the HF propagation stuff and the electrical principles sections are kind of going over my head

also once i pass, do i get HF privileges right away or is there some waiting period before the FCC updates things? and which bands should i even start on, i dont have an HF radio yet so i guess ill be shopping around too. any advice appreciated

The General exam is a step up for sure but honestly if you passed Tech you can definitely do it. The math questions tripped me up at first, the ones about impedance and reactance and stuff, but if you just memorize the formulas and do a bunch of practice tests on HamStudy or QRZ it starts to click. I probably did like 400-500 practice questions before I sat for the actual exam and felt pretty comfortable going in.

On the HF access thing, once the VE session submits your results to the FCC it usually shows up in the ULS database within a day or two, sometimes faster. You dont have to wait for a new license in the mail or anything, once its in the database you can operate on your new privileges. Just check the FCC ULS lookup and when it shows General youre good to go.

For a first HF radio a lot of people suggest something like an IC-7300 if budget isnt a concern, or if you want to spend less there are decent options like the Xiegu G90 that a lot of new HF folks seem to like. 40 meters is probably where id start, especially in the evenings, you can usually find plenty of activity and the propagation is pretty forgiving compared to some of the higher bands.

yeah the prop stuff confused me too when i was studying, just kind of skim it enough to get the test questions right and then it makes more sense once you actually start listening on HF and experiencing it yourself. hearing a station fade in and out on 20m teaches you more than the book does tbh

one thing i wish someone told me before i upgraded was to actually spend some time just listening on HF before you jump in and transmit, like even if you only have a general coverage receiver or can use webSDR. gives you a feel for how the bands actually sound and what the conventions are because HF is pretty different from the repeater stuff