I was pretty much stuck at the end of Chapter 3 of the ARRL General book for about 2 weeks before I remembered my goal to schedule the exam is next week. Today I got through Ch4 and should get back to a chapter each day. The organization of the ARRL book is pretty much exactly oppostite of the HamStudy partial book. So I am at the point where I am seen all or nearly all of the material.

The ARRL book is a slog though. It is exceptionally dry and the only breaks are the little boxes where they will sometimes talk about something more interesting. Gone is the humor and first person stories of HamStudy, unfortunately. The other thing I dislike is that ARRL puts the questions and answers at the start of each section rather than the end. I personally prefer to read the content then test myself. This approach leads to lots of page flipping.

On the practical front I have listened to a lot of chatter. The FM repeaters in this area are pretty good in both coverage as well as a handful of Hams being on throughout the day. I still haven’t pressed the Tx button on my handset, but I’ve gotten close a couple times. I listen to these guys (and one or two women) chat and it’s amazing how they can talk about, frankly, nothing, for such a long time. I think me not knowing what to talk about is probably the biggest hangup at this point. But we’ll get there.