ok so ive been licensed for about 4 months now, got my technician ticket and ive been mostly doing 2m and 70cm stuff but i want to get on HF. i thought techs couldnt do HF at all but then someone at the club meeting last week said something about being able to use some parts of 10m? and maybe 40m for CW? im honestly not sure if he knew what he was talking about or if the rules changed recently or what. i looked at part 97 for like 20 minutes and gave up, the way its written is just really hard to follow. can someone just explain in plain english what a tech is actually allowed to do on HF without me having to decode legal language

yeah part 97 is rough to read, dont feel bad about that. so basically as a tech you do get some HF privileges, not a lot but some. on 10 meters you can run up to 200 watts and use phone (voice) between 28.300 and 28.500 MHz, and then there's a chunk of the band lower down where you can do CW and some digital modes. on 40 meters its CW only and just a small slice, same with 15m and 80m — honestly those CW-only segments are pretty narrow and most people dont bother unless they really want to practice morse before their general exam. the ARRL website has a frequency/privilege chart thats way easier to read than the actual regulation text, i'd start there. and yeah get your general, its not that hard and it opens up basically everything

10m phone is actually pretty fun when the band is open, ive worked some decent dx on it with a tech ticket back before i upgraded. just dont expect it to be open all the time, depends a lot on where we are in the solar cycle and right now its actually not bad. the general exam is worth doing though seriously, i waited two years and kind of regret it