so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, mostly because my neighbor does it and it seems really cool. i looked up what you have to do to get licensed and honestly i got kind of overwhelmed. theres the technician, general, extra... i dont even know if i need all of them or just the first one to get started. someone at work told me you have to know morse code but i heard that was changed? anyway i just want to know what the actual process is and how hard the test really is. i'm not great at memorizing stuff and some of the sample questions i saw looked pretty technical. is there like a good way to study for this without buying a whole bunch of books

morse code requirement got dropped back in 2007 so dont worry about that. for the technician exam you just need to pass a 35 question multiple choice test, 26 correct to pass. honestly the hardest part for most people is the electrical theory section, things like ohms law and how antennas work, but its really not that bad if you just put in a couple weeks of studying.

the resource most people point to is hamstudy.org, its free and it drills you on the actual question pool that the exam comes from. the fcc question pool is public so every single question on your test will come from that pool, no surprises. i passed my tech on about 3 weeks of studying maybe 20-30 minutes a night using that site and the gordon west book my elmer lent me. you dont need the book though, hamstudy alone is probably enough for most people. find a local club and they usually hold license exams pretty regularly, some even do free classes before the test.

yeah i just did this like two months ago so it's pretty fresh. i used hamstudy like the other guy said and also watched some youtube videos when i hit a concept i didn't understand, there's a channel i forget the name of that explains the electrical stuff in plain english which helped a lot. the test felt easier than the practice exams honestly, i think i psyched myself out studying. just keep doing practice tests until you're consistently hitting like 85% or better and you'll be fine on the real thing