so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and honestly i think im ready to try for general. been doing a lot of VHF/UHF stuff and some satellite which has been awesome but i really want to get on HF and actually talk to people further away. my buddy works 40m all the time and it sounds like so much fun.

anyway i started looking at the question pool and some of it is pretty confusing. like the electrical stuff makes sense to me more or less but the regulations sections have me turned around. is it worth just grinding the question pool or do i need to actually understand all of it? i used qrz.com to practice for my tech and it worked fine but im not sure if general is harder in a different way or just more of the same.

also once i actually pass, what HF privileges do i get right away? like can i just jump on 40m SSB or do i have to wait for the license to update in the system or something. i know there are some band portions i still wont have access to but i got confused reading the chart on the arrl site

general is definitely harder than tech but not crazy hard if you put in a couple weeks of actual study. i'd say dont just memorize the answers without understanding at least a little of the why, especially the band plans and the operating rules stuff because those questions can get tricky if you're just pattern matching. the electrical formulas you really do just need to know, ohms law, reactance, that kind of thing. nothing too wild.

on the privileges thing - yeah once you pass and the examiner session gets uploaded to the FCC you can technically operate under your new privileges before the paper license even shows up. you just need your name to appear in the ULS database, which usually takes a day or two after the VE session. some people check obsessively after their session lol. as a general you get most of HF, big chunks of 40m 20m 15m 10m for phone, and you still cant use the Extra-only subands obviously but thats not a huge deal starting out. 40m SSB is super active especially evenings, that would be my first stop.

i did the same thing like 6 months ago. went from tech to general and yeah qrz practice exams are fine, i just ran through them over and over untill i was getting like 90% consistently and then went and took it. passed first try. the regs stuff does take a little more reading but its not that bad.

honestly the thing nobody told me was that once i got on HF i had no idea how to actually use my radio for SSB, like i knew the theory but tuning around and finding a clear frequency and not stepping on someone, all that took a while to figure out. thats almost harder than the exam lol