ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now, got my technician last spring and ive mostly just been doing local 2m repeater stuff which is fine. but i want to start doing more and i keep reading about Part 97 and what techs are allowed to do vs general vs extra and honestly the FCC website just makes my head spin

like i know techs get HF privileges on 10m but only certain modes? and i think theres something about 15m or 40m CW only for techs but i cant remember and i dont want to accidentally transmit somewhere im not supposed to. someone at my club told me something about a 200 watt limit too but then i read something else that contradicted that

is there like a plain english version of this somewhere or can someone just explain the tech HF privileges in a way that makes sense. also what happens if you accidentally go out of band, is that an automatic fine or does the FCC even care about that for honest mistakes

yeah the band plan stuff is genuinely confusing when you first look at it. the ARRL band plan chart is way more readable than the actual Part 97 text, just google "ARRL band plan" and print it out and stick it near your radio, seriously saves headaches

for techs on HF, you get phone privileges on 10m from 28.300 to 28.500 MHz, and then CW on portions of 80, 40, 15, and 10. the 40m CW segment is 7.025 to 7.125 if i remember right. the 200w thing is real, techs are limited to 200w PEP on HF, vs the 1500w that extras can run

as for accidentally going out of band, look the FCC isnt sitting there waiting to nail a new tech who drifts 2 kHz. that said, willful or repeated violations are a different story and they do issue NOVs and fines for that stuff. just use the band chart and youll be fine. most rigs let you set limits anyway

im pretty much in the same boat as you, got my tech like 6 weeks ago. what helped me was just downloading the actual Part 97 rules as a PDF and using ctrl+F to search for stuff. its still dense but at least you can find the specific section pretty fast. section 97.301 is where the frequency allocations live i think