so I've been wanting to get into ham radio for like two years now and I finally just decided to actually do it and sign up for the exam. problem is I have no idea how to study for this thing. I looked at the question pool online and honestly it's a little overwhelming, like there's so much there. a friend of mine said just memorize the answers without worrying about understanding them but that feels wrong to me, like what's the point of being a ham if I don't know what I'm doing

anyway I've been looking at hamstudy.org which seems pretty good but I dunno if there's something better or if I should get an actual book. is the ARRL tech book worth buying or is it overkill for just the technician. also are there sections of the pool I should focus on more than others or is it all pretty evenly tested

hamstudy is honestly all you need for most people, especially if you're the kind of person who can just grind through flashcards. the way it tracks which questions you're getting wrong and keeps drilling those is pretty solid. I passed using pretty much just that site over like two weeks of casual studying maybe 20-30 minutes a night.

that said I do think understanding the material helps you retain it better even if you're not strictly required to. the electrical stuff like ohms law and the basic circuit questions, once you just get the concepts down the answers kind of make sense on their own instead of just being random letters to memorize. the rules and regs section is where a lot of people just straight up memorize though because some of that is just "what frequency range is this" type stuff and theres not really a deeper why to it

the ARRL book is fine but i borrowed it from my library and honestly only read like three chapters before I just went back to the website. depends on how you learn I guess

your friend isnt entirely wrong tbh, a lot of people do pass just by pattern matching the answers and theres nothing wrong with that to get your foot in the door. the license is really just the beginning anyway, the real learning happens on the air. dont stress too much about fully understanding every single question in the pool before your exam date.

one thing i'd say is pay attention to the RF safety questions because there seem to be more of them than people expect and they tripped up a couple guys at our club's recent license session. also anything about repeater operations since thats probably what youll be using most as a new tech. good luck with it, its really not that hard once you just commit to sitting down and going through it