If you want to take some of the mystery and "black magic" out of RF, I'd recommend spending time with a few things.
A NanoVNA - (less than $200 on Amazon/Ebay) This little tool will help you understand how transmission lines work, along with antennas, matching, etc. You can use them to test antenna matching, and gain, etc. If you want to roll your own high-gain antennas, etc.. this is an amazing piece of kit to have at a low price.
Not as directly applicable, but effectively free. GNU Radio -- This will give you a feel for signal processing, and how RF stuff works internally... it works with audio I/O so you can experiment for effectively $0. If you get to the point where you understand I/Q signals and "negative" frequencies, a lot of things become clearer.
A NanoVNA - (less than $200 on Amazon/Ebay) This little tool will help you understand how transmission lines work, along with antennas, matching, etc. You can use them to test antenna matching, and gain, etc. If you want to roll your own high-gain antennas, etc.. this is an amazing piece of kit to have at a low price.
Not as directly applicable, but effectively free. GNU Radio -- This will give you a feel for signal processing, and how RF stuff works internally... it works with audio I/O so you can experiment for effectively $0. If you get to the point where you understand I/Q signals and "negative" frequencies, a lot of things become clearer.