so i just passed my technician exam last month and ive been reading through part 97 trying to figure out what i actually have privileges for on HF. the band chart on the arrl site is kind of confusing me because it shows tech privileges on certain portions of like 10m and 15m i think but then i read somewhere that phone isnt allowed on some of those. im not totally sure i understand the difference between what modes are allowed where and whether cw counts toward any of this differently than phone does.

also is there anything in part 97 specifically that says what power limits are for technicians on HF or is it just the same 1500 watts as everyone else? i feel like i read something about 200 watts somewhere but cant remember where. just trying to make sure i dont accidentally transmit somewhere im not supposed to before i get my general

okay so the short version is techs do get some HF but its pretty limited. on 10 meters you get phone and image from 28.300 to 28.500 MHz and thats probably the one most people actually use. for 15m you only get CW, and same deal on 40m and 80m — CW only and only in small slices of those bands. the 200 watt thing you're thinking of is real, techs are limited to 200 watts PEP on 10m phone i believe, not the full 1500.

honestly just grab the actual part 97 pdf from the fcc site and ctrl+f for section 97.301 which covers authorized frequencies by class. its a lot clearer than the band charts once you sit down with it for a few minutes. the arrl chart is fine but it compresses a lot of info into a small space and can be hard to parse when you're new to this stuff

went through the same confusion when i was a tech lol. what helped me was just using the arrl's online frequency allocations page and filtering by license class. also dont sleep on 10m when the band is open, even with the tech privileges you can work a surprising amount of DX during good solar conditions. i upgraded to general pretty quick after passing tech mostly just so i didnt have to think about it anymore tbh