so ive been a General for about two years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the Extra exam. like i got my General on the first try and that wasnt too bad but i keep hearing people say the Extra is a whole different animal. mostly im curious about the theory sections because im not an engineer or anything, i work in landscaping lol. i can handle memorizing stuff but some of the questions ive looked at on the question pool about like impedance matching and filter design and whatever, i just kinda stare at them.

is it actually necessary to understand what youre learning or can you sort of grind the question pool and pass that way? and honestly whats the biggest reason people even bother getting Extra, is it mostly just for the HF frequencies you cant access otherwise or is there more to it than that? not trying to be lazy just trying to figure out if its worth the time investment right now

honestly the question pool grind works for a lot of people but i'd say dont completely skip understanding the theory because some of those questions are worded in ways that'll trip you up if you're just pattern matching. like the stuff on transmission lines and SWR, once you get even a basic feel for whats actually happening it becomes way easier to eliminate wrong answers.

i passed mine about three years ago and i'm not an engineer either, i just spent maybe 6 weeks going through the HamStudy app every day on my lunch break and watching a few of the KB6NU videos on youtube for the harder concepts. the extra privileges are real though, those 25 khz or so you pick up on 75/80 meters dont sound like much but on a crowded band it actually matters, and 60 meters has some extra allocations too depending on where you operate. plus if you ever want to be a VE and give exams you need the Extra. some people care about that some dont.

i just passed mine like six weeks ago so its pretty fresh. the math questions are the ones that scared me the most but theres really only a handful that actually require you to punch numbers into a calculator and if you learn the formulas for like decibel conversions and the resonant frequency formula you've probably got most of them covered. the rest is more conceptual than it looks. i was definitely overthinking it before i started studying.