so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and mostly been doing 2m/70cm stuff with my handheld and a mobile rig in the truck. its been fun but honestly i keep hearing people talk about HF and working DX and i think i want to get into that. figured general would open that up for me.

anyway i started looking at the question pool and honestly some of it is pretty confusing to me. the electrical theory stuff especially. like i understand ohms law and basic stuff from when i did the tech exam but some of the propagation questions and the stuff about impedance matching is kinda going over my head. is that stuff actually important to know for operating or is it more just pass the test and figure it out later type of deal?

also how long did it take most people to study for this? i dont want to rush it but i also dont want to spend 6 months grinding flashcards if i dont have to. im using ham study dot org right now which seems decent. any other resources people recommend?

the propagation stuff actually matters once you start on HF, like youll actually want to know why 40m works great at night and 10m is basically dead half the time depending on the solar cycle. so i wouldnt just memorize and forget it. that said for passing the exam yeah you can get through it mostly on pattern recognition if you do enough practice tests.

i studied maybe 3 weeks casually, like 20-30 mins a night before bed, and passed with a few to spare. the electrical theory was the part that tripped me up too but there are some decent youtube videos that explain the LC circuit and impedance stuff in plain english. just search for general class ham radio study and youll find stuff. ham study is good, i also used the Gordon West book which some people think is old school but i liked having something physical to read through.

once you get the general ticket and get on 40m for the first time and actually make a contact somewhere across the country or overseas youll be glad you did it. its a different world from VHF repeaters honestly.

just passed my general like 6 weeks ago coming from tech so kind of in the same boat you were. the exam wasnt as bad as i expected tbh. the math questions stressed me out but there are only a few of them and if you know the basic formulas you can usually work it out even if you dont totally understand why it works that way.

hamstudy was basically all i used and i just kept doing practice tests until i was hitting like 85% consistently and then i went and took it. took me maybe 2 weeks of studying but i had some free time so your mileage may vary. good luck with it