so ive been a Tech for about 8 months now and honestly i spend most of my time on 2m and 70cm but ive been getting more curious about HF lately, keep hearing people on the local repeater talking about working dx and contesting and stuff and i want to get in on that

my question is basically how hard is the General exam compared to the Tech exam, i remember the Tech one being pretty manageable but i heard General has a lot more about electronics theory and propagation and i was never great at math in school so that part worries me a bit

also is it worth just going straight for Extra or is that a whole different beast, i dont even know if i need all those privileges right away anyway

honestly the General exam isnt that bad, i was in the same boat as you like two years ago and i just used the HamStudy website and drilled the question pool for maybe 3 weeks and passed on the first try. the electronics theory stuff looks scarier than it is because you can basically just memorize the answers without fully understanding the math behind them, not saying thats the best approach long term but for passing the test it works fine

the propagation questions are actually kinda interesting once you start understanding why 40m does what it does at night versus 20m during the day, it starts clicking when you actually get on HF and hear it for yourself. i wouldnt bother rushing to Extra right away, General gets you access to most of the good HF segments and you can study for Extra later when youre not so overwhelmed with everything else

just upgraded myself like 6 weeks ago so this is fresh for me. the exam was fine, maybe a little harder than Tech but not by a ton. the stuff about feedlines and impedance matching tripped me up at first but honestly just watch a couple youtube videos and it makes more sense. HamStudy is what everyone says to use and yeah it works, i did like 20-30 minutes a day for maybe a month

the HF privileges are worth it, even if you dont have a big antenna setup yet, i threw up a wire dipole in my backyard for 40m and was making contacts the first weekend, its a completely different experience than VHF