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You can get the whole question pool online, it's public record. Some folks real good at memorization just do that, but it is big. There used to be a series of books you could buy, informally called the “Bash Books” which was just books of all the questions and answers gathered from a variety of sources, which made Dick Bash a lot of money in their heyday, but the internet sort of made them obsolete.

I hear ARRL is going to launch online study courses (and there is something about it on their website) and I think that's going to appeal to a lot of folks if it's less expensive than their hard media.

The test was a bit surprising. I went in totally unprepared and didn't even have a calculator. Two questions out of 50 I might have used one on and still I think I got them correct. But I have a good sense of scale and am good at graphically visualizing mathematical concepts, had a good teacher in first year tech school that introduced those ideas and they have served me well. It's great for roughing things out and that's all you need for most multiple choice decisions.

There was very little on Amateur regulations but I suppose that's a reflection of the less limited privileges of the class. Just a couple Extra specific questions relating to VE duties and satellite stations and one freebie asking to choose an HF band that doesn't allow SSB or Image (30M duh).

Where I know I was weak was in some of the trivial nomenclature that related to actual RF circuits AND administrative things because in my graphic mind names mean nothing until they have been practiced IRL and discussed among peers. I don't know the Cabrillo format from polar coordinates, and couldn't tell Amsat mode M/U (or whatever) from the man in the moon, but I can tell you just about anything that's likely to be on the test about ASCII, BAUDOT, SSTV, or Packet. I have a lot to learn about propagation on HF, but could tell you all you need to know about it on VHF/UHF, then start falling off again at microwave.

But it all goes back to things I have actually done and learned by doing, or as I said up top even pioneering. And it was clear my real life experience carried the day.

Which is precisely why uneducated greybearded rednecks such as myself and countless others are valuable to society. It is informal authority that is seriously underrated and we need perhaps to assert ourselves more.