ok so ive been licensed for about 4 months now as a technician and i keep seeing stuff about HF privileges and Part 97 and honestly the FCC website is kind of a nightmare to read through. i know i have some HF privileges but i cant figure out exactly what bands and modes im allowed to use. like i know i can do some stuff on 10 meters but what about 15 or 40? my elmer told me something about phone vs CW but i was half paying attention tbh

also is there anything specific i need to worry about regarding station identification rules? i asked someone at my local club and they said something about ID every 10 minutes but i wasnt sure if that applied to all modes or just voice. this is probably a dumb question but id rather ask than get in trouble

not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of new techs. so as a technician you get CW privileges on 80, 40, 15, and 10 meters but only in small slices near the bottom of each band. for phone (voice) you basically only get 10 meters, specifically 28.300 to 28.500 MHz. thats it for HF phone until you upgrade to general.

on the ID thing your club guy was mostly right - Part 97.119 says you have to identify at the end of each transmission or series of transmissions and at least every 10 minutes during a contact. and yeah it applies regardless of mode, so if youre doing CW you ID in CW, if youre doing voice you say your callsign in phone. you can actually ID in CW even during a phone contact if you want, which some people do. just dont forget to do it at all and youre 99% fine, the FCC really isnt out there monitoring every QSO but its good practice to do it right anyway

yeah what he said. i'd also just download the actual Part 97 rules as a PDF, its not as bad as the website makes it look once you have it all in one document. i printed mine out when i was studying for general and just highlighted the stuff that seemed relevant. the band plan chart from the ARRL is also way easier to read than the actual regulatory text if you just want to know where you can operate