so ive had my Technician for about 8 months now and mostly been doing local 2m stuff and a little APRS but honestly its getting a little boring and i keep hearing people talk about HF and making contacts way out of state and even overseas and im like ok i want in on that

my question is the General exam, is it actually a lot harder than the Tech exam or is it more of the same kind of stuff? i remember the Tech pool had a bunch of questions about like band privileges and basic electronics and some rules stuff. is General way more technical or is it doable if you just grind the question pool for a few weeks

also kind of a side question, once you pass do you get HF access right away or do you have to wait for it to show up in the FCC database thing first before you can operate? i dont want to jump on 40m and get yelled at lol

General is definitely more material but i wouldnt say its harder in terms of like difficulty per question, its just more of it. there's more propagation stuff, more about operating practices on HF, some extra electronics theory but nothing too wild. if you passed Tech you can absolutely pass General, just give yourself a solid 3-4 weeks with HamStudy or whatever you used before and you'll be fine

on the FCC question yeah you do have to wait for it to update in ULS before you can operate on the General portions of the bands. usually takes a day or two but ive seen it go faster sometimes. just keep checking and dont operate until your new privileges show up. not worth the hassle of jumping the gun

i upgraded last spring and honestly the propagation questions tripped me up a bit, like understanding why 40m works great at night and 10m is more of a daytime band and all that. its not super hard once you get it but i kept mixing things up on practice tests. the operating rules section was pretty easy though, lots of it overlaps with Tech stuff

40m is a great place to start once you get your General by the way, tons of activity and you can work a lot of DX when conditions are decent