so ive been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has been doing it for years and finally talked me into trying to get licensed. i went and looked up the FCC stuff and honestly it was kind of overwhelming, like i dont even know what pool of questions to study from or if there are practice tests online or what. do i need to buy a book or is there enough free stuff out there to get me through the technician exam? also how hard is the test really, i did okay in school but its been like 15 years since i thought about anything involving electricity or radio waves. just looking for a general idea of what im getting into before i commit to actually signing up for a session

honestly the tech exam is pretty manageable, dont let the FCC website freak you out. hamstudy.org is where most people start and its completely free, it has the entire question pool and tracks which ones youre getting wrong so you can focus on those. the whole pool is like 400 something questions and the actual test pulls 35 from it, so if you just grind through hamstudy for a couple weeks you start recognizing most of them pretty quick. some of the electrical theory stuff like ohms law trips people up at first but its not college level or anything, more like you just have to remember a few formulas and understand basically what they mean. i wouldnt bother buying a book personally unless you really like reading that way, but the ARRL technician manual exists if you want something more structured. once you feel like youre consistently passing the practice exams on hamstudy you're probably ready to find a session near you through the ARRL exam search

i just passed mine like two months ago so this is fresh for me lol. hamstudy was basically all i used, did maybe 3 weeks of studying maybe 20 mins a day and passed with only a couple wrong. the questions about repeaters and simplex and stuff like that were easy, the parts about like antenna polarization and some of the RF safety questions were the ones i had to really go over a few times. also just so you know the test itself is 35 questions and you need 26 right to pass so theres a little wiggle room. oh and look up if theres a hamfest or club near you because sometimes they do free or cheap testing sessions and the folks running it are usually pretty chill, way less intimidating than i expected