ok so i passed my technician exam like three weeks ago and ive been reading through part 97 trying to figure out what im actually allowed to do. the band plan stuff is confusing enough but then theres all this language about "phone" privileges and "image" and i dont really know what counts as what. like can i operate on 10 meters at all or is that only general and above? i thought i saw something about a small slice of 10m being allowed for techs but then someone at my club said thats only CW which i havent learned yet. also someone mentioned third party traffic rules and i have no idea where to start with that. sorry if this is a dumb question i just want to make sure im not doing anything i shouldnt be before i key up

not a dumb question at all, this stuff genuinely trips people up. so yeah techs do get a small chunk of 10 meters — 28.000 to 28.300 MHz but its CW only below 28.300, and then there's a sliver from 28.300 to 28.500 where you can do SSB phone. so your club friend was partially right but not entirely. the ARRL band plan page lays it out pretty clearly if you just want a visual. as for third party traffic that's a whole separate rabbit hole, basically its about whether you can have a non-ham talk through your station to someone else, and it depends a lot on what country is involved. most of the time in normal domestic operation you wont even think about it. just get on 2 meters and VHF stuff first while you're getting comfortable and worry about HF once you maybe upgrade to general

yeah the part 97 wording is genuinely written in that government legal style that makes simple things sound way more complicated than they are. i remember being totally lost when i first got my ticket. one thing that helped me was just downloading the actual part 97 document and using ctrl+F to search for stuff rather than reading it cover to cover. also the technician privileges chart on the ARRL site is way more readable than the actual FCC text tbh. dont stress too much about third party stuff until you actually have a reason to deal with it