so ive had my technician for about 8 months now and mostly been doing local stuff on 2m and 70cm, some repeaters, a little simplex. but i keep hearing people talk about HF and honestly it sounds way more interesting than i expected when i first got into this hobby. started listening around on a friends radio and heard some guys doing a contact all the way to brazil which kind of blew my mind a little.

anyway i started looking at the general class question pool and it honestly seems a lot harder than the tech exam. theres stuff in there about propagation and feed line loss calculations and some of the electrical stuff that i dont really remember from high school. is it actually as hard as it looks or does it kind of click once you study a bit? i've been using hamStudy.org which seems decent. also wondering if there's particular areas i should focus on or if just grinding through all the questions is the way to go

also side question - once i actually get general what frequencies am i actually going to be able to use for like regular HF contacts, im a little confused about the band plan stuff still

honestly the general exam is not that bad once you put some time into it. the tech exam was mostly memorization and general is too but theres a bit more actual understanding needed, like you cant just guess your way through the electrical circuit questions the same way. i used the Gordon West book and just went through it section by section over a few weeks, then drilled on hamStudy the last week or so before my session. passed first try with only a couple wrong.

the propagation stuff is probably the most interesting to actually learn because once you understand why 40m works great at night and 10m is all over the place depending on the solar cycle it makes HF feel less random. as for bands once you upgrade youll have access to most of HF, the big ones people use for general rag chewing are 40m, 20m, and 15m. 17m is real nice too when the band is open. 10m is exciting when solar conditions are good but it can be dead for weeks. just start on 40m SSB and youll find plenty of people to talk to especially in the evenings

i just did this like two months ago, went from tech to general. the exam wasnt as scary as i thought but i did study for probably 6 weeks, maybe a little more. the stuff that tripped me up was the license privileges section ironically, like which frequencies you can use as general vs extra, theres a lot of overlap and the questions are picky about it. also some of the antenna and feed line questions took me a minute to wrap my head around.

hamStudy is great just keep doing practice exams until youre consistently hitting like 85% or better and youll be fine. oh and get on HF as soon as you can after you pass, dont wait until you feel ready or have the perfect setup because that day never comes lol. i started with a terrible wire antenna in my backyard and still managed contacts on 40m the first weekend