ok so i passed my technician exam about 3 months ago and ive been mostly on 2m and 70cm doing local stuff but i keep hearing people say techs have some HF privileges and i honestly dont really understand what that means or where to find the actual rule about it. like i looked at part 97 for a bit but its kind of a wall of text and i wasnt sure if i was reading the right section. i think i found something about 10 meters but then someone at my club said i can also do some stuff on 15 and 40 but only like cw or something? im not even sure i have that right. anyway my radio does cover HF and i just dont want to accidentally be somewhere im not supposed to be. is there like a plain english version of what techs are actually allowed to do on HF

yeah the part 97 table of allocations is kind of brutal to read at first. basically as a tech you get some limited HF stuff — 80m you can do cw only in a small segment around 3.525, 40m is similar just cw, 15m you get a little voice and image at the top end of the band like 21.200 to 21.225, and 10m is actually pretty open for techs, you can do phone and data across a decent chunk of it. the ARRL website has a band plan chart that makes this way more readable than the actual fcc document, id just look that up honestly. the main thing is dont transmit voice on 40m as a tech, thats a common mistake and yeah the fcc does care about that one.

i was in the same boat when i first got my ticket. what finally made it click for me was just downloading the arrl band chart and keeping it open while i was messing around with the radio. also worth knowing that the power limits are different for techs on some of those HF segments, i think 200 watts on some of them not the full 1500, so double check that too before you key up