okay so i passed my general exam back in march and ive been reading through part 97 trying to figure out exactly what im allowed to do but honestly its pretty confusing the way its written. like i get the basic band plan stuff but what i dont understand is whether i can talk to someone whos on the technician portion of a band if they happen to drift into my segment or whatever. also theres something about third party traffic i keep reading about and i cant figure out if that applies to like, every country or just certain ones.

im not trying to do anything sketchy i just want to make sure im operating legal. my elmer kind of glossed over all this when i was studying and mostly just told me to use common sense which isnt super helpful when youre new

the third party thing trips up a lot of people, basically the US has agreements with certain countries that allow you to pass traffic on behalf of a third party (someone whos not a licensed ham) and if the country youre talking to isnt on that list you just cant do it. the ARRL website has the full list and its worth bookmarking honestly. most casual ragchewing doesnt even come close to this so dont stress too much about it unless youre like relaying messages for someone.

as for the band edge stuff and who can operate where, generally you just need to stay in your own authorized frequencies. if a tech drifts into your segment thats their problem not yours, you didnt do anything wrong by operating where youre allowed to operate. the band plans are sometimes a gentlemens agreement and sometimes actual FCC rules so it helps to know which is which, the FCC part 97 subpart D is where the actual frequency allocations live if you want to look it up directly rather than reading summaries

yeah i was in the same boat when i upgraded. honestly the way part 97 is written feels like it was designed by lawyers for lawyers lol. one thing that helped me was just finding a good band plan chart that had the actual FCC allocations highlighted separate from the ARRL recommended usage, because those two things are NOT the same and mixing them up is where people get confused. your license class determines your privledges, not what frequency the other station is on if that makes sense