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 reading that techs can do some HF too and i honestly cannot figure out from the FCC part 97 stuff what exactly im allowed to do. like i tried reading the actual rules and it just made me more confused not less.

i know theres something about 10m and maybe 15m? or maybe its just certain parts of those bands i dont know. and what about power limits, is it different for techs on HF vs general class operators. sorry if this is a dumb question i just cant get a straight answer from googling it

not a dumb question at all, the band plan stuff genuinely reads like legalese the first few times. so yeah, as a tech you do get some HF privileges but theyre pretty limited. on 10m you can operate phone between 28.300 and 28.500 MHz, that one is probably the most useful for you. you also get some CW privileges on 15m, 40m, 80m, and a couple other bands but theyre narrow slivers mostly down in the CW portions. honestly the easiest thing is to find the ARRL band plan chart, they lay it all out by license class and its way easier to read than part 97 directly.

power limit for techs on HF is 200 watts PEP on the HF bands with those limited privileges, same as general on some bands i think, though for your VHF/UHF stuff youre allowed up to 1500w which almost nobody runs that high anyway. just get the general license, the question pool isnt that bad and it opens up a lot more of the spectrum

yeah what he said but also just want to add — i was in the exact same spot like two years ago and the thing that finally clicked for me was downloading the actual part 97 pdf and using ctrl+f to search for "technician" specifically. still dense but at least you can skip to the relevant parts. section 97.301 is the one that lists authorized frequency bands by license class if you want to go straight to the source