so ive had my tech license for about a year and a half now and honestly i mostly just use it for local 2m stuff and some APRS but ive been watching people on the HF bands and im starting to get the itch. my buddy at the club keeps telling me to just go for General already and i probably will but i guess my question is - how different is the exam from tech? like is it a completely different animal or is it more of the same stuff just a bit deeper

i got my tech on the first try studying with HamStudy for like 3 weeks so im not worried about the studying part i just dont know where to start. is the pool way bigger? i remember hearing something about propagation and that kind of stuff being on it which is totally new territory for me. any tips from people who went through this recently would be helpful

honestly its not that bad, i was dreading it too but ended up passing with like a 90 something. the question pool is bigger yeah but a lot of it overlaps with tech stuff you already know - ohms law and basic electrical theory shows up again, operating procedures, that kind of thing. the new stuff is mostly propagation, some more detailed antenna theory, and a bit more on HF operating practices. nothing too crazy.

i used the same HamStudy grind you mentioned plus i grabbed the ARRL General class book from the library just to have something to read that explained the why behind the answers, not just memorize and go. that helped a lot with the propagation section because that stuff actually makes sense once you understand how the ionosphere works. give yourself maybe 4-5 weeks and you should be fine. and once you get that upgrade and start hearing signals coming in from across the ocean on 20m its completely worth it

i just upgraded like two months ago so this is pretty fresh for me. i was in the same boat, had my tech for almost two years just doing local stuff. the exam wasnt terrible but i did mess up on some of the electrical formulas - theres a few more of those than on tech so brush up on calculating things like impedance and resonant frequency. i blanked on one and had to just guess lol

the HF privileges are great btw even with a cheap radio. im using a used IC-7300 i found and 20 meters has been wild, talked to a guy in Japan last week on just a wire dipole out back