so im trying to get my technician license and ive been kind of overwhelmed with where to begin. i downloaded the question pool from the arrl website i think but its like 400 something questions and i dont even know if i should just memorize all of them or actually try to understand the material. someone at my local club said just use hamstudy.org and grind through it but another guy told me to buy the actual arrl technician book first. i dont really have a ton of time to read a whole book before my exam date which is in about 3 weeks. is the question pool enough on its own or am i going to be lost on the actual test if i dont know the background stuff

honestly hamstudy is how most people do it these days and you can absolutely pass without reading the whole book. the question pool is the actual pool they pull the test questions from so if you know the pool you know the test, thats kind of the whole deal. i'd say just do hamstudy every day for like 20-30 mins and take the practice tests when you feel ready. once you're consistently hitting 80+ percent on the practice exams you're probably good to go. the electrical stuff like ohms law and basic antenna theory is worth actually understanding a little because it shows up in a few different ways, but the regulations and operating procedures stuff you can mostly just memorize the answers.

three weeks is plenty of time dont stress it. i passed mine after about a week and a half of just doing hamstudy on my lunch break. one thing i'll mention though, the current question pool expires at some point and a new one comes in, so just make sure whatever resource you're using is the current pool. i think there was a changeover not that long ago and some of the older PDFs floating around online are out of date. check the ncvec website or just trust hamstudy since they keep it updated. good luck, its not a hard test once you get into it