What to do with a Technician license
Guide · updated July 2026
You passed the exam and the call sign came through — congrats. Now the fun part. A Technician has the full run of everything from 6 meters up, plus a real foothold on HF. Most new hams park on a 2 m repeater and stop; here’s everything else that ticket buys you.
You unlocked more than you think
From 6 meters up — that’s 6 m, 2 m, 1.25 m, 70 cm and the microwave bands — a Technician has every mode and the full legal power limit. FM, SSB, CW, digital, satellites, the works. And you get a genuine slice of HF too, including the one band where a Tech can run voice. The trick is knowing there’s a whole world past the local repeater.
| Where | What a Technician gets | Power |
|---|---|---|
| 6 m and up 50 MHz+ | Everything — FM, SSB, CW, digital, satellites | up to 1500 W |
| 10 m 28.0–28.5 | CW & data (28.0–28.3), plus SSB voice (28.3–28.5) | 200 W |
| 15 / 40 / 80 m | CW only, in narrow segments | 200 W |
Privileges here are US (FCC Part 97). Always double-check against a current Technician band chart before you key up on a new band.
Weak-signal & the magic band
FM repeaters are the shallow end. Turn the dial to the bottom of each band and you’ll find the SSB and CW weak-signal crowd — horizontal antennas, small power, and surprising distance.
- 6 m — the “magic band.” It earns the nickname: dead quiet for weeks, then sporadic-E or a tropo opening cracks it wide and you’re suddenly working stations a thousand miles off with a modest setup. The ARRL VHF contests (January, June, September) are the best excuse to chase it.
- 2 m & 70 cm SSB/CW. Not just repeater bands. On SSB they’re a quiet, rewarding place to ragchew locally — and when a tropospheric duct sets up (temperature inversions, calm nights, coastlines), those same signals carry for hundreds of miles. The SSB calling frequencies are 50.125, 144.200 and 432.100 MHz (all USB).
New to sideband? It’s the heart of weak-signal work — see our guide to SSB for LSB vs USB, bandwidth and tuning.
Talk direct — and talk through space
- Simplex. Skip the repeater and go radio-to-radio. The 2 m national simplex calling frequency is 146.520 MHz (446.000 on 70 cm). It’s the honest test of what your radio and antenna can really do, and a friendly place to answer a stranger — call once in a while and see who’s out there.
- FM satellites. Yes, a Technician can work the birds. With a handheld and a small Yagi you can hit FM “easy-sats” and the ISS repeater as they pass overhead — a genuine thrill for the price of an afternoon. We wrote a whole guide: working amateur radio satellites.
Data over the air
- APRS. On 144.390 MHz (North America), position beacons, short messages, weather and telemetry ride over packet; digipeaters extend the range and igates push it onto aprs.fi. Perfect for tracking a vehicle or a balloon, event comms, and public service.
- Packet radio. The original ham data mode — AX.25 over a TNC — and honestly it deserves a comeback. Keyboard-to-keyboard chats, bulletin-board systems, and Winlink email-over-radio all run on it. A 2 m rig and a modern TNC (or a sound-card app) is all it takes to get a node on the air. If you remember the BBS days, you know how much fun this was — let’s bring it back.
Yes — you get HF
Don’t let anyone tell you a Tech is stuck on VHF. You have real HF privileges — just on select bands, and mostly on CW:
- 10 m is the one to try right now. You get CW and data from 28.000–28.300 and SSB voice from 28.300–28.500 MHz — the only HF band where a Technician can talk. Solar Cycle 25 peaked in late 2024, and even on the downslope 10 m keeps opening up almost daily. A cheap radio and a simple dipole can put you across the country — and across an ocean — on a handful of watts. If you can, give it a go; it’s a blast.
- CW on 15, 40 and 80 m. Morse only, in narrow segments, at 200 W — but that’s a low-power, code-driven adventure that’s cooler than it sounds, and a great reason to learn the code.
When you want all of HF for voice and digital, that’s the nudge to sit the General exam — but there’s plenty to enjoy long before you do.
Fresh call sign? Put it to work.
Tell us your first contact — simplex, satellite or a 10 m opening — in #ham-radio.