so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and got me curious. i looked it up and apparently theres like different levels of licenses? technician, general, extra or something like that. im not sure if i should just go straight for the technician one or if theres a reason to try for a higher one right away. also i dont really know how to study for this thing, i found some websites but some of them look kind of old and i dont know if the question pools are still current. any advice would be helpful, i feel like im missing something obvious

yeah technician is definitely the right starting point, dont try to jump to general right away unless you really want to grind through two separate exams back to back which some people do but honestly its a lot. the question pool does get updated every few years so just make sure whatever you're using is current — i think the technician pool got refreshed not too long ago so double check that.

HamStudy.org is what most people use now and its free, it basically just drills you on the actual questions that will be on the test. some people also like the ARRL study guides but the website is probably fine for most folks. once you get like 85% or above consistently on the practice tests youre probably ready to just go take it. the test itself is 35 questions and you need 26 right to pass so theres a little wiggle room. find a local club that does VE sessions, most of them do walkins and its usually like 15 bucks.

i passed mine like 4 months ago, used hamstudy pretty much exclusively and passed first try. honestly the hardest part for me was the electrical stuff like ohms law and some of the antenna questions but if you just keep doing practice tests it starts to click. dont overthink it