ok so i passed my technician exam like two months ago and ive been mostly just doing 2m stuff but i want to get on HF eventually. my buddy told me techs can do some HF but i honestly dont fully understand what part 97 actually says about it. like i know theres privileges on 10m but what about 40m? i thought i heard something about CW on certain bands but im not sure if thats still a thing or if the rules changed. i dont want to transmit somewhere im not supposed to and get in trouble with the FCC before i even know what im doing. anyone have a simple breakdown or know where in part 97 i should actually be looking because the FCC website is kind of a wall of text

yeah so techs do get some HF privileges, its not a ton but its there. on 10m you can do phone between 28.300 and 28.500 MHz which is actually pretty useful when the band is open. for 40m and 80m and 15m you can do CW only in small segments, i think 40m its around 7.025-7.125 but dont quote me on that exactly, look it up in the actual part 97.301 table because i always mix up the exact edges. the thing people forget is you still need to ID properly every 10 minutes and at the end of a contact, that trips up a lot of new folks. honestly just study the general exam pool even if youre not ready to test, it explains a lot of this stuff in plain english and youll understand your current privileges better too

i was in the same boat when i first got my tech ticket. the part 97 website thing is rough, what i did was just find one of those frequency privilege charts that hams put together, ARRL has one thats not too bad. just dont transmit outside what youre allowed and youll be fine, the FCC isnt sitting there waiting to catch new hams making honest mistakes but you still dont want to do it. get your general when you can, makes life a lot easier