so i decided i want to get my technician license and honestly i have no idea where to start. i downloaded the question pool pdf from the arrl website or maybe it was the fcc site i dont remember but its like 400 pages and i kind of panicked and closed it. is that really what i need to memorize? all of it?

a friend told me to just use hamstudy.org and do practice tests until i pass but that feels like cheating somehow, like im just memorizing answers without understanding anything. but then again maybe thats fine for the tech exam? i genuinely dont know how hard the actual test is compared to the practice stuff. the electrical questions are what im most worried about, like ohms law and that kind of stuff, i havent done math like that since high school probably 15 years ago.

any tips from people who went through this recently would be helpful, especially if youre not like a super technical person to begin with

hamstudy is totally fine, dont feel weird about it. the tech exam is literally drawn from a published question pool so youre not cheating youre just studying smart. every question on your actual test will be word for word from that pool. i used hamstudy for maybe 3 weeks, like 20-30 minutes a night while watching tv basically, and passed first try with only a couple wrong.

for the electrical stuff i wouldnt stress too much, the ohms law questions are pretty formulaic once you see the pattern and theres only a handful of them. if you want something more structured than just grinding flashcards, gordon west study guides are popular and break things down pretty plain english. some people swear by the arrl handbook but honestly that feels like overkill for tech. just get comfortable seeing passing scores on the practice exams and youll be fine on test day, the real thing felt easier to me than the practice tests weirdly enough

yeah the pool looks scarier than it is. when i did mine i think there were something like 35 questions on the actual exam and you only need 26 right to pass so theres actually a decent amount of room for error which helped my nerves a lot.

one thing i'll say is dont skip the radio wave propagation and operating procedures sections even if they seem boring, those actually matter once you start using the radio and its kind of nice to actually know what youre doing rather than just knowing which bubble to fill in. but i mean everybody studies differently so whatever gets you to pass is the right method