ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (tech class) and i thought i had a pretty good handle on what frequencies i could use but then somebody at a club meeting last week said something that got me confused. he was talking about part 97 and how theres rules about what content you can transmit and i honestly didnt even know there were rules about CONTENT, i thought it was just about frequencies and power levels.

like i know i cant do music or broadcast stuff but what exactly counts as prohibited content? im mostly doing simplex on 2m and some 70cm through a repeater and i dont think ive broken any rules but now im second guessing myself. also he mentioned something about obscene language which obviously makes sense but are there other things people commonly mess up without realizing it? i tried reading the actual part 97 text online but its kind of dense

yeah part 97.113 is the one your looking for, thats the prohibited transmissions section. the big ones that trip people up are using the radio for business communications (like you cant call your employee and tell them to pick up supplies, that kind of thing), music is out, and you cant transmit if theres any pecuniary interest meaning you cant get paid to do it. the obscene language thing is in there too but honestly for most people just chatting on a repeater none of that stuff really comes up.

for a tech on 2m and 70cm you should be fine as long as youre not doing anything weird. the content rules apply to everyone regardless of license class. most common thing i see newer ops mess up isnt really content stuff, its more like forgetting to ID every 10 minutes or using too much power without thinking about it. not saying you are, just thats where people slip up more often in practice.

i was in the same boat when i first got licensed, part 97 is genuinely hard to read if youre not used to legal-style documents. one thing that helped me was arrl has a summary version thats a lot more readable than the actual cfr text. not a replacement for reading the real thing eventually but good for getting the general picture first. the content rules are honestly pretty common sense once you see them laid out plainly, its more about the technical stuff like emission types and frequency privileges where it gets complicated for techs