so ive been trying to study for the technician exam for about 3 weeks now and honestly im kind of all over the place. i downloaded the question pool from the arrl website and theres like 400+ questions and it feels like a lot. a friend told me i dont need to memorize all of them and that some sections are more important than others but he couldnt really tell me which ones.

i tried one of those practice test sites and i keep failing the electrical stuff, like ohms law and the power calculations. the rules and regs questions i can mostly get right but the math ones are killing me. is there like a certain order i should study in or does it matter? also someone mentioned gordon west study guide, is that worth getting or is just doing the question pool enough

the math stuff looks scarier than it is, promise. for the tech exam you really only need a handful of formulas and they show up in maybe 5-6 questions total. ohms law is just V=IR and once you get that one the power formula (P=IE) kind of clicks on its own. honestly just drill those two until they're automatic and dont overthink the rest.

for study order i'd say just go section by section through the pool, dont skip around. the gordon west book is decent if you like having something physical to read but i passed without it just using hamstudy.org and doing practice tests every day for like two weeks. that site tracks which questions you keep getting wrong and just keeps throwing them at you until you stop missing them. thats what really worked for me anyway. the pool only has so many questions and once you've seen them all a few times the actual exam feels pretty familiar.

yeah hamstudy is what everyone ends up using, it's pretty much the go-to at this point. one thing i'll add though is dont just memorize the answers without understanding why, especially the rules and operating procedure stuff. you'll need to actually know it once you're on the air and if you just pattern-matched your way through the pool it can get confusing later when real situations come up that don't match the exact wording from the test.

the electrical math really isnt bad, maybe spend an afternoon with a youtube video on basic electronics and it'll make way more sense than just staring at the question pool. i think ham radio crashcourse or someone like that has a tech exam prep video. good luck with it