so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and we got to talking and he said i should just get my license. i looked it up and theres like three levels? technician, general, extra i think. anyway i dont really know where to start studying or what the test is actually like. is it hard? i took a practice test online and got like 60% which i think means i failed lol. also do you have to memorize a bunch of math because im not great at that. any advice would be helpful, been going back and forth on this for a few months now and i think i finally want to just do it

honestly the technician test is way more approachable than people think. the question pool is public, like literally every question that could be on your test is available ahead of time, so if you study the pool you're basically just memorizing answers at a certain point. i used hamstudy.org and just did practice questions every day for about two weeks, maybe 20-30 minutes a day, and passed with an 85 or something. there is some basic electronics and a little bit of ohm's law stuff but nothing crazy, and even if you dont fully understand the math you can usually learn what the right answer is. the ARRL technician study guide book is good too if you like having something physical to read through but honestly the free online tools are just as good. find a local club and ask about upcoming exam sessions, a lot of VE teams do them pretty regularly and the atmosphere is usually pretty relaxed, not like some scary proctored thing

yeah i was in the same spot like eight months ago, ended up just grinding hamstudy for like ten days straight and passed first try. the math freaked me out too but theres like maybe 5 questions on the actual exam that involve any calculation and even then its pretty basic stuff. 60% on your first practice test with zero studying is actually not bad at all, gives you a baseline. just keep hammering the practice tests until youre consistently hitting 80+ and youll be fine. the real test is 35 questions and you need a 26 to pass so theres a little wiggle room