so ive been a Tech for about two years now and mostly just been doing 2m/70cm stuff with my local repeaters and some simplex. i keep hearing people talk about HF and honestly it sounds really cool but im not sure if im ready to tackle the General exam. like i remember the Tech exam being not too bad but i heard General is a lot harder with all the electrical theory stuff and propagation and i dont really have a background in electronics at all.

has anyone gone through this recently? how long did you study and what did you use? i found the hamstudy.org site which seems pretty good but wondering if there are other resources people actually recommend. also is the HF stuff worth it once you get the license or is it kind of overhyped? i guess im also wondering what bands you actually get with General because i looked it up and got confused about the chart with all the segments

honestly the General exam is not that much harder than Tech, people kind of scare you about it more than they should. the electrical theory questions are the same basic stuff just a little more depth, ohms law, basic circuit stuff, nothing crazy. i studied for maybe 3 weeks using hamstudy and the ARRL General book and passed first try with a decent score. the propagation section is actually kind of interesting once you get into it.

as for the bands, you get HF privileges on most of the major bands, 40m is probably where you'll spend a lot of time starting out especially for domestic contacts, 20m is great for DX when conditions are decent. 10m is fantastic when the solar cycle cooperates and right now we're heading into a pretty good part of the cycle so timing is actually not bad. just be aware you're limited to certain band segments as General, you dont get the full band like an Extra does, but there's plenty of room to operate and honestly most of the activity is in the General segments anyway so you wont feel too squeezed.

i did this like 8 months ago, went from Tech to General. took me about 2 weeks of going through the question pool on hamstudy every night before bed. the math questions look scary but theres really only like a handful of formulas you need and if you just practice them a few times they stick. i dont have any electronics background either so dont let that stop you.

and yeah HF is totally worth it, first time i made a contact on 40m with a wire antenna I threw up in a tree it kind of blew my mind. talking to someone 800 miles away with a piece of wire is just different than repeaters, hard to explain