ok so i just passed my technician exam like three weeks ago and im still trying to figure out what exactly i'm allowed to do. i know i have full privs on VHF and up but someone at the club meeting told me i can also transmit on some HF segments? and then someone else said something different so now im just confused.

also i was reading about Part 97 and honestly its a lot to take through, like what even is the difference between auxiliary operation and repeater operation, do i need to worry about that stuff right now? i dont want to accidentally break a rule i didnt know about. is there somewhere that explains all this in plain english without me having to read the whole FCC document

yeah the tech HF thing trips a lot of people up. you do get some HF privileges - specifically you can operate phone on a small chunk of 10 meters around 28.300 to 28.500 MHz, and you get CW privileges on a few other bands like 40, 15, and 10 meters but only on specific small segments. the ARRL website actually has a band plan chart that shows it all visually which is way easier than reading Part 97 straight through.

as for auxiliary vs repeater, honestly dont stress about that for now. thats more relevant when youre setting up infrastructure like a linked repeater system or something. for everyday operating you probably wont run into it. just focus on learning the basics of where you can transmit and the basic rules like ID every 10 minutes and at the end of a contact, no music, no obscene language, dont transmit without your callsign. thats 90% of what you need day to day.

the ARRL has a prvilege chart on their site, just google ARRL technician privileges and it'll come up. way easier than parsing 97.301 or whatever section it is lol. i was in the same boat when i got my tech and the chart really helped