so ive been a tech for about 2 years now and mostly just been doing 2m and some 70cm stuff, got into APRS for a while which was fun but honestly i feel like im missing out on all the HF conversation everyone keeps talking about at my local club meetings. decided to finally sit down and study for general.

im using the hamstudy.org site and the gordon west book and its going ok but some of the questions feel really random to me. like i understand the basic propagation stuff and the band privileges arent too bad to memorize but then theres all these questions about things like impedance matching and feed line loss calculations that i feel like i could just brute force memorize the answers without actually understanding whats going on. is that what most people do or should i actually be trying to learn the theory behind it

also what HF bands do most general class guys actually use? i know i wont have full privileges on everything but wondering where the action is for someone just starting out on HF

honestly for the exam most people do a mix of both, some stuff you just memorize because you'll figure it out later on the air and some stuff like the band plan is worth actually knowing because youll use it. the impedance stuff kind of clicks once you actually start messing with antennas so dont sweat it too hard for the test.

for bands i'd say 40m is probably where you'll spend a lot of time starting out, its pretty forgiving and theres usually activity day and night depending on conditions. 20m is the workhorse for DX when the bands are open. as a general you get a pretty good chunk of both so you wont feel too limited. just get on and start listening before you even transmit, youll learn a ton just from that

went through the same thing last year, passed general in march and it really wasnt as bad as i thought it would be. hamstudy is pretty much all you need tbh, just keep grinding the practice tests until youre consistently hitting like 85% or above and you should be fine on test day. some of the electrical theory questions i definitely just memorized the answer without fully getting why and i still passed no problem.

one thing i will say is that after i got my general i kind of wished i had paid more attention to the operating practices section because there are definitely some unwritten rules on HF that you pick up slowly and its a little awkward when you dont know them at first lol