okay so i passed my technician exam like three weeks ago and ive been trying to figure out what i'm actually allowed to do on HF. i read through part 97 but honestly it kind of goes in circles and i cant tell if im reading it right. like i know techs get some HF privileges but every time i look it up i get a different answer depending on the website.

from what i can tell i get 10 meters phone and some other stuff? but someone at the club meeting said techs can also do some CW on lower bands and i had no idea about that. is there like a simple breakdown somewhere or does anyone just know off the top of their head what the actual limits are. also does it matter what mode you're using, like is digital treated differently than voice for the band privileges

yeah the tech HF thing trips up a lot of new hams because the privileges are kind of scattered across the band plan chart rather than explained in plain english in part 97 itself. basically as a tech you get 80, 40, 15, and 10 meter CW on small slices of those bands, and then 10 meters opens up more with SSB phone and also some RTTY and digital modes above 28.3 MHz or so. the 10m phone segment is 28.3 to 28.5 which isnt huge but its something.

the ARRL band plan chart is honestly the fastest way to look this up, they color code it by license class and its way less confusing than reading the actual CFR text. part 97.301 is where the privileges technically live but yeah its dense. digital modes fall under the same frequency limits as the other modes for the most part, the mode restrictions are more about which segments allow which emission types rather than digital being some separate category.

i was in the same boat when i got my tech, spent like a whole evening convinced i couldnt do anything on HF at all lol. the CW privileges on the lower bands are real but the segments are tiny, like we're talking a few kHz on 40m i think. not a ton of room but its something if you want to practice code. upgrade to general as soon as you can tho honestly, it opens up so much more and the exam isnt that bad