so ive been a tech for about two years now and honestly i feel like ive been hitting a wall. i can do repeaters and all that fine but i want to get on HF and actually talk to people farther out, do some of the digital modes i keep hearing about, maybe try some DX eventually. my buddy told me the general exam isnt that much harder than tech but i dunno, some of the stuff i looked at online seems pretty involved. the question pools for electrical stuff especially.

im using hamstudy.org right now and also have the gordon west book but i havent cracked it open much. been doing the practice tests and hovering around like 70-75% which i know isnt enough. the stuff thats killing me is the operating procedures section and some of the propagation questions, like i get the basic concept but then the actual exam questions feel weirdly worded sometimes. anyway is there anything specific people recommend focusing on, or is it just grind the practice tests until the score goes up? also how different is actually operating HF going to feel compared to what im used to

the weird wording thing is real, took me a while to get used to it too. what helped me was not just memorizing the answers but actually understanding why, especially for the propagation stuff. like if you know that 40m does well at night because of how the ionosphere changes, the questions start making more sense instead of feeling random. hamstudy is solid, just keep hammering it. when you can pass consistently like 85%+ on fresh question sets you're probably ready.

as for actually getting on HF, its a different world. you'll need a radio obviously and an antenna situation that might take some figuring out depending on where you live. 40 meters is usually where people tell new generals to start, plenty of activity and the propagation is forgiving. the phone portions of general give you a good chunk of spectrum to work with. dont stress too much about operating procedures, most of it is common sense once youre actually on the air and listening for a bit.

i just upgraded like four months ago so this is fresh for me lol. the electrical theory questions were what got me too, i spent way too long on the math ones and honestly on the real test there were only a couple that actually needed me to calculate anything. i probably overprep'd that section. the band plan stuff and knowing which frequencies you can and cant use as a general, thats worth knowing cold because it does come up and its easy points if you just memorize it.

one thing nobody told me before i upgraded -- get your HF setup figured out before you pass because once you have that ticket in hand you're gonna want to get on immediately and then you'll be frustrated if you dont have anything to transmit with. i had a week of just sitting there with my new privleges and no antenna lmao