okay so ive been licensed for about 4 months now, just a technician, and i keep reading different things online about what frequencies im actually allowed to use. like i know i have VHF and UHF privileges but then someone at a club meeting mentioned i can also use some HF bands? and i looked it up and found something about 10 meters and also maybe 40 meters for phone or something? i tried reading the actual Part 97 rules on the FCC website and honestly it was kind of overwhelming, lots of legal language i wasnt really following. is there like a simple breakdown somewhere or can someone just tell me basically what my actual privileges are without me having to parse through all that. also is there anything i should specifically NOT do that techs accidentally do and get in trouble for

yeah the actual Part 97 text is rough to read if you're not used to it, totally get that. so techs do get some HF — you get 10m phone above 28.300, which is actually pretty fun during good solar conditions. and there's also CW privileges on a few other bands like 40m and 15m and a couple others but only for morse code, no voice. the 40m phone thing you heard about might have been someone misremembering or maybe talking about General. a lot of people mix that up. the ARRL has a frequency allocation chart that's way easier to read than the FCC document, i'd just look that up, they have a pdf version floating around. main thing techs accidentally do wrong is trying to operate on 20m or 40m phone thinking they have those privileges — they don't, and technically that's operating outside your license class which is a Part 97 violation. not like the FCC is actively hunting people down but it's still worth doing it right especially when you're new and building habits

i was in the same boat a few months ago honestly. what helped me was just downloading the ARRL band plan and keeping it open on my phone for a while. also the technician question pool for the exam actually covers a lot of this stuff even after you pass, worth rereading some of those questions because they explain the logic behind the rules a bit. the HF stuff on 10m is real and worth exploring when the band opens up, which it does a lot more now with the solar cycle being decent lately