so ive been a general for about two years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the extra exam. like i get that its more privileges and all that but honestly i dont use half the HF bands i already have access to. my buddy keeps telling me to just do it for the theory knowledge alone but the question pool looks pretty intimidating when i started reading through it. the stuff about filter design and advanced antenna theory and all the math behind it... i dunno. is that stuff actually useful day to day or is it more like trivia you learn just to pass the test and then forget. also not sure what privileges im actually missing that id care about, someone told me the extra portions of 40 and 20 are less crowded but i havent really noticed a huge difference when im operating. just looking for honest opinions i guess, not trying to talk myself out of it but also dont want to spend weeks studying for something that doesnt really change much practically

honestly the extra portions on 40m are noticeably cleaner during contest weekends, that alone kinda sold me on it after getting fed up with QRM during sweepstakes. but yeah the theory stuff, some of it is genuinely interesting once it clicks. i actually learned more about how my antenna system really works just from going through the question pool seriously instead of just memorizing answers. the filter stuff seemed pointless at first but it helped me understand why my old rig had that weird intermod problem i could never figure out. whether thats worth weeks of studying is totally up to you though, some people just want to operate and thats fine too.

i took the extra after being a general for like 8 months, probably rushed it a bit but i passed first try. the math in the question pool looks scarier than it is honestly, a lot of it you can get through with some pattern recognition if im being real with you. that said my elmer told me something that stuck with me which is that the extra exam is less about the bands and more about proving to yourself you understand the whole picture. i dunno if i fully agree but i do think i troubleshoot stuff better now than i did before i studied for it. the phone privileges on 75m were kind of a big deal for me personally because thats where a lot of the nets i wanted to check into were running.