ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now, tech class, and im still genuinely confused about what im actually allowed to do. like i know i have VHF/UHF privileges and some HF but every time i try to read the actual part 97 rules on the FCC website my brain kind of glazes over. its not exactly written in plain english lol

my main question is around the HF stuff - i thought techs could only do like certain segments on 10 meters for phone but my buddy was telling me we also have some 40m and 80m privileges? just CW though maybe? and then theres the whole third party traffic thing which i dont fully get either. does that apply to me if im just talking to someone in another country or is that only when youre passing messages for someone else

also does anyone know if theres a simpler version of part 97 somewhere that breaks it down without the legalese, ive been trying to find something like that for weeks

yeah the ARRL has a decent summary of tech privileges on their website, way easier to read than the actual FCC document. for the HF stuff youre mostly right - techs get CW on parts of 80, 40, and 15 meters, and then phone + other modes on a slice of 10m (28.3 to 28.5 i think, dont quote me on the exact edges). so your buddy wasnt wrong but its very limited compared to what a general or extra can do.

third party traffic is its own rabbit hole honestly. basically it means youre passing a message on behalf of someone who isnt licensed. so if your neighbor wants to say hi to someone in brazil through your radio, technically that gets into third party territory and the US needs a third party agreement with that country for it to be legal. if youre just chatting with another ham yourself its not really an issue. the rules get a bit fuzzy in casual conversations but thats the general idea.

im pretty much in the same boat as you, got my tech last year and still finding stuff that surprises me. one thing that helped me was just downloading the actual part 97 as a PDF and searching for specific terms rather than trying to read the whole thing front to back, that way was brutal

also someone on another forum mentioned the gordon west technician study book actually explains the privileges pretty clearly even if youre already licensed, might be worth grabbing used for a few bucks