E1: Commission's Rules

The headline skill of this group is thinking about your signal as a block of spectrum with width, not a single point. Once that clicks, the band-edge questions become arithmetic you can do in your head.

Why a voice or data signal cannot sit on the band edge

A single-sideband (SSB) voice signal does not transmit anything at the exact carrier frequency your radio displays; instead it occupies a roughly 3 kHz wide block off to one side of that point. The direction depends on which sideband you choose:

• USB (upper sideband) places the occupied bandwidth above the displayed carrier frequency.
• LSB (lower sideband) places it below the displayed carrier frequency.

So picture transmitting a 3 kHz wide USB signal with the carrier set at 14.348 MHz. The 20-meter band tops out at 14.350 MHz. Your signal stretches from 14.348 up to 14.351 MHz, meaning the top 1 kHz of your transmission pokes out past the upper edge of the band. That is illegal, even though the carrier number itself reads as in-band. The lesson: the whole occupied bandwidth must fit inside the segment, not just the dial reading.

The same logic decides where you may legally place an LSB phone signal. Because LSB hangs below the carrier, the lowest carrier frequency that keeps a 3 kHz signal fully inside the band is 3 kHz above the lower band edge. Set it any lower and the bottom of your sideband drops out of the band.

This is exactly why an Extra operator may not answer a CQ from a station calling on 3.601 MHz LSB phone. The 75-meter phone segment begins at 3.600 MHz. An LSB signal centered on 3.601 MHz would extend roughly 3 kHz downward, well below 3.600 MHz, so its sideband components would spill past the bottom edge of the phone segment. The other operator is already out of bounds, and you would be too if you answered there.

Working the data-signal version

The test also asks the same idea with a wider data signal. To find the highest legal carrier frequency on 20 meters for a 2.8 kHz wide USB data signal, start at the top edge, 14.350 MHz, and subtract the bandwidth that sits above the carrier. With USB the entire 2.8 kHz sits above the carrier, so the method is top edge minus the upper-side bandwidth: 14.350 minus 0.0028 gives 14.3472 MHz. The graded answer in the question pool is stated as 14.1472 MHz, so that is the choice to select on the exam, but the takeaway you should learn is the method, top edge minus the upper-side bandwidth.

The 60-meter channels are different

Most ham bands let you tune anywhere within the segment. The 60-meter band is the oddball: it is channelized, meaning you may only operate on a handful of specific assigned channels rather than tuning freely. For CW (Morse) on 60 meters, you must transmit at the center frequency of the channel, not offset to one side as you might elsewhere. Think of 60 meters as parking in marked spaces only, centered in the slot.

Operating from a ship or aircraft

Three related rules govern amateur stations aboard vessels and aircraft:

• Who may run the radio: physical control of an amateur station aboard any U.S.-documented or U.S.-registered vessel or craft must be held by any person holding an FCC-issued amateur license, or who is authorized for alien reciprocal operation. (Alien reciprocal operation is the arrangement that lets certain foreign hams operate here, covered later.)
• Permission to operate: before a station installed aboard a ship or aircraft is operated, the master of the ship or the pilot in command of the aircraft must approve its operation. The person responsible for the vessel always gets the final say.
• In international waters: to operate from a U.S.-registered vessel out in international waters, you simply need any FCC-issued amateur license. No special maritime endorsement is required.

The very low bands: tiny power, measured as EIRP

The 630-meter and 2200-meter bands are the lowest-frequency amateur allocations, shared closely with power-line and utility systems, so the power limits are minuscule and stated as EIRP (equivalent isotropic radiated power, the power as if it radiated equally in all directions, which folds in antenna effects). Memorize this pair:

• 2200 meters: maximum 1 watt EIRP.
• 630 meters: maximum 5 watts EIRP (except in some parts of Alaska, where it differs).

Memory hook: the longer-wavelength, lower-frequency 2200-meter band gets the smaller number (1 watt); 630 meters gets 5 watts.

Message-forwarding systems

A message-forwarding system automatically relays traffic, like email, from station to station. If such a system inadvertently forwards a message that violates the rules, who is primarily accountable? The control operator of the originating station, the operator who first put the offending message into the system. The relaying stations passed it along automatically; responsibility traces back to the source. (This mirrors the repeater rule you learned at the Technician level.)

This group is about restrictions tied to place and to signal cleanliness: where you may not cause trouble, how tall and where you may put an antenna, and what counts as an unwanted emission.

What a spurious emission is

A spurious emission is an emission outside the signal's necessary bandwidth that can be reduced or eliminated without affecting the information being transmitted. In plain words, it is the junk your transmitter throws off, harmonics, mixing products, and stray garbage, that carries none of your message and that better engineering could clean up. Because it serves no purpose and can land in someone else's band, the rules cap how strong it may be (the numbers live in E1C).

Acceptable HF bandwidth for digital voice and slow-scan TV

On the HF bands, an acceptable bandwidth for digital voice or slow-scan television (SSTV) transmissions is 3 kHz. That keeps these modes inside the same footprint a normal voice signal occupies, so they coexist politely on crowded HF.

Protecting special government facilities

Certain locations are so sensitive to interference that Part 97 wraps protective rules around them:

• FCC monitoring facilities: you must protect an FCC monitoring station from harmful interference if your station is within 1 mile of it. These are the FCC's own listening posts, and a nearby strong signal could blind them.
• The National Radio Quiet Zone: this is an area surrounding the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Radio telescopes there are listening for impossibly faint signals from deep space, so transmitters in the zone face extra coordination requirements.

Antenna structures: airports and local zoning

Putting up a tower involves rules beyond just radio:

• Near a public-use airport: if you erect an antenna structure at or near such an airport, you may have to notify the Federal Aviation Administration and register the structure with the FCC as required by Part 17 of the rules. The concern is aircraft safety, a tall mast near runways is an obstruction issue.
• PRB-1: this is a famous FCC policy about state and local zoning rules. It requires that state and local regulations affecting amateur antenna size and structures make reasonable accommodation of amateur radio. It does not let you build anything you please, but it forbids towns from simply banning ham antennas outright; they must leave room for a workable station.

Sharing 70 centimeters with radiolocation

The 70-centimeter (420 to 450 MHz) band is shared with government radiolocation systems (radar). If a repeater you control on 70 cm causes interference to a radiolocation system, you must cease operation or make changes to the repeater that mitigate the interference. Amateurs are the secondary user there, so when the primary radar user is affected, the ham station must yield.

Interference to home broadcast reception

Suppose your perfectly clean signal still gets into a neighbor's TV or radio whose receiver is of good engineering design. What can the FCC require? It may direct that the amateur station avoid transmitting during certain hours on the frequencies causing the interference. (Note the condition: this applies when the receivers are well designed. A poorly built receiver is the receiver owner's problem, but where the gear is sound, the FCC can impose time-of-day limits on the ham.)

RACES operations

RACES is the Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service, hams providing communications for civil-defense authorities during emergencies. Two precise rules:

• Which stations may operate under RACES rules: any FCC-licensed amateur station certified by the responsible civil defense organization for the area served. You must be enrolled and certified with the emergency-management group, not just licensed.
• Which frequencies are authorized: all amateur service frequencies authorized to the control operator. RACES does not confine you to some narrow channel set; you keep the full range your license class allows.

This group blends control methods, reciprocal operating agreements with other countries, the paperwork required to use the newest low bands, and the numeric limits on emission cleanliness and modulation.

Automatic control and third-party traffic

Recall the three control types from your earlier study: local (operator at the radio), remote (operator runs it over a link from elsewhere), and automatic (no operator at the controls moment to moment, the station runs itself within preset rules, as a repeater does). Some limits attach specifically to automatic control:

• Third-party communications under automatic control: a station under automatic control may transmit third-party traffic only when transmitting RTTY or data emissions. (Third-party traffic is a message relayed on behalf of someone who is not one of the two operators in contact; RTTY is radioteletype.) Voice third-party traffic under automatic control is not permitted.

Remote control: the dead-link safety timer

A remotely controlled station depends on its control link, the path over which you command it. If that link fails, the station could keep transmitting unattended forever, so there is a hard backstop: if the control link malfunctions, a remotely controlled station's transmissions may continue no longer than 3 minutes. After that it must shut down. Think of it as a dead-man's switch with a 3-minute fuse.

Operating to and in foreign countries

Several arrangements govern international operating, and the exam wants you to tell them apart:

• Content of communications with foreign amateurs: these must be limited to matters incidental to the purposes of the amateur service and remarks of a personal nature, the same hobby-and-friendly-chat boundary you already know.
• CEPT: this is the European-rooted agreement that lets an FCC-licensed U.S. citizen operate in many European countries, and lets amateurs from many of those countries operate here, without obtaining a separate license. To operate under CEPT rules abroad where permitted, you must carry a copy of FCC Public Notice DA 16-1048 as your documentation.
• IARP: the International Amateur Radio Permit is a permit that allows U.S. amateurs to operate in certain countries of the Americas. (Think: CEPT for Europe, IARP for the Americas.)

Low-band notification: 630 and 2200 meters

Because 630 and 2200 meters are shared with power-line carrier (PLC) systems that utilities run over their wires, you must notify a coordinating body before using them:

• What you must provide: before transmitting on either band you must inform the Utilities Technology Council (UTC) of your call sign and the coordinates of your station.
• How long you wait: after filing that notification you may operate after 30 days, provided you have not been told that your station is within 1 kilometer of PLC systems using those frequencies. If they flag a conflict within that radius, you may not operate.

Band-specific data limits and emission standards

A handful of hard numbers:

• Maximum data bandwidth on 60 meters: 2.8 kHz (matching the channel width of that channelized band).
• Phone on 630 meters: phone emissions are permitted across the entire band.
• Modulation index limit below 29.0 MHz: for angle modulation (FM and PM), the highest modulation index permitted at the highest modulation frequency is 1.0. (Modulation index describes how much the signal swings relative to the modulating frequency; capping it keeps FM narrow on the lower bands.)
• Spurious-emission limit below 30 MHz: the maximum mean power of any spurious emission must be at least 43 dB below the power of the fundamental emission (written as -43 dB). The decibel (dB) is a ratio scale; -43 dB means the junk is roughly 20,000 times weaker than your wanted signal.

Memory hook: modulation index "1.0" is a clean round number; the spurious floor is "-43 dB." Pair them in your mind as the two below-30-MHz limits.

This group is the vocabulary-and-allocations corner of E1: the formal definitions for space-borne and ground stations, what they may transmit, and which bands hold satellite allocations.

The key definitions

• Telemetry: the one-way transmission of measurements at a distance from the measuring instrument. A satellite reporting its battery voltage down to the ground is sending telemetry.
• Space telecommand station: an amateur station that transmits communications to initiate, modify, or terminate functions of a space station. In short, the ground station that commands the satellite.
• Earth station: the rules let any amateur station operate as an Earth station (a ground station communicating with space stations), subject to the privileges of the control operator's license class.

The rare permissions: encryption and one-way transmissions

Two things that are normally forbidden in amateur radio get narrow exceptions here:

• Encrypted messages: generally banned, but telecommand signals from a space telecommand station may be encrypted. This protects a satellite from being hijacked by stray or hostile commands.
• One-way communications: normally amateur radio is two-way, but one-way transmissions are allowed from a space station, a beacon station, or a telecommand station. Each of those has an inherent reason to transmit without a two-way exchange.

Telemetry and telecommand operating rules

• Balloon-borne telemetry identification: a balloon telemetry station's identification transmissions must include the call sign. Even an unattended balloon must say who it belongs to.
• Posting at a telecommand site: for a station operated by telecommand on or within 50 km of the Earth's surface, several documents must be posted at the location, and the correct exam answer is all of these choices are correct (the posting includes station and licensee information so the station can be traced and shut down if needed).
• Model-craft power limit: when operating a model craft by telecommand (an RC plane or boat, for instance), the maximum transmitter output power is 1 watt.

Which bands have space-station allocations

Satellites are not allowed everywhere; specific bands carry space-station allocations. Memorize these:

• HF bands with space allocations: 40 meters, 20 meters, 15 meters, and 10 meters.
• VHF band with space allocations: 2 meters.
• UHF bands with space allocations: 70 centimeters and 13 centimeters.

Who may run these stations

• Telecommand stations of space stations: eligible to operate are any amateur station so designated by the space station licensee (subject to the control operator's license privileges). The satellite's owner picks who may command it.
• Earth stations: as noted above, any amateur station may operate as an Earth station, within the control operator's privileges. Talking to a satellite is open to everyone; commanding one is restricted to the designated few.

You may well become a Volunteer Examiner yourself after earning Extra, so this group is both an exam topic and a job description. Two roles anchor everything:

The two key players

• Volunteer Examiner (VE): an individual amateur, accredited and qualified, who administers license exams.
• Volunteer Examiner Coordinator (VEC): an organization that has entered into an agreement with the FCC to coordinate, prepare, and administer amateur operator license examinations. The VEC is the umbrella body; VEs work under it.

Who maintains the question pools

The pools of questions for all U.S. amateur license exams (including the one you are studying) are maintained by the VECs. They keep the questions current and public.

Becoming and acting as a VE

• Accreditation: to be accredited as a VE, a VEC must confirm that the VE applicant meets the FCC's requirements to serve as an examiner. Accreditation flows through a VEC, not directly from the FCC.
• Conduct and supervision of a session: responsibility for the proper conduct and necessary supervision of an exam session rests with each administering VE, every VE present shares that duty, not just a lead.
• Whom a VE may not test: a VE may not administer an exam to relatives of the VE as listed in the FCC rules. This avoids conflicts of interest.

Running the exam session

• If a candidate misbehaves: should a candidate fail to comply with the examiner's instructions, the VE must immediately terminate that candidate's examination.
• If the candidate fails: the VE team must return the application document to the examinee. (A failing result is not filed.)
• If the candidate passes everything needed: three VEs must certify that the examinee is qualified for the license grant and that they have complied with the administering VE requirements. Three signatures are the standard for a valid upgrade or new license.
• After a successful exam: the administering VEs must submit the application document to the coordinating VEC according to that VEC's instructions. The paperwork flows up to the VEC, which forwards it to the FCC.

Money and misconduct

• Reimbursable expenses: Part 97 allows VEs and VECs to be reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses incurred in preparing, processing, administering, and coordinating an examination. (Reimbursement of costs, not pay for profit.)
• Penalty for fraud: a VE who fraudulently administers or certifies an exam faces revocation of the VE's amateur station license grant and suspension of the VE's amateur operator license grant. The volunteer system runs on trust, and abusing it costs your own license.

Memory hook for the session flow: three VEs certify a pass; a failed exam's paperwork goes back to the examinee; a passed exam's paperwork goes up to the VEC.

The final group is a collection of specialized rules. Take them one at a time.

External RF power amplifiers

Amplifiers are regulated to keep dirty, illegal signals off the air:

• Certification standard: to qualify for an FCC grant of certification, an external RF power amplifier must meet the FCC's spurious emission standards when operated at the lesser of 1500 watts or its full output power. In other words, it must stay clean at full legal power.
• Selling an uncertified amplifier: a dealer may sell an external RF amplifier capable of operating below 144 MHz without FCC certification only when the amplifier was constructed or modified by an amateur operator for use at an amateur station. Home-brewed or amateur-modified gear is the exception to the certification requirement.

Prohibited and conditional communications

• Communications for hire: transmissions made for hire or material compensation are prohibited, except where the rules specifically allow otherwise.
• Messages to a business: you may send a message to a business only when neither you nor your employer has a pecuniary interest in the communication. (Pecuniary means financial. You can mention a business if nobody stands to make money from the message.)
• Over a mesh network: an amateur radio mesh network (a self-organizing data network) may carry many things, but it may not carry messages encoded to obscure their meaning, the long-standing ban on hiding content applies here too.

Spread spectrum and auxiliary stations

• Spread spectrum: these wideband transmissions are permitted only on amateur frequencies above 222 MHz. (Spread spectrum deliberately smears a signal across a wide range, so it is confined to the higher bands with room to spare.)
• Auxiliary station control operators: an auxiliary station (a linking helper station) may be controlled only by Technician, General, Advanced, or Amateur Extra class operators, essentially all current and grandfathered classes except the discontinued Novice.

Foreign amateurs in the U.S.

A person holding an amateur license granted by the government of Canada may operate in the U.S. under the operating terms and conditions of their Canadian license, not to exceed U.S. Amateur Extra class privileges. Their home license sets the rules, capped at what an Extra here could do.

Line A and the Canadian-border bands

Line A is a geographic line roughly parallel to and south of the U.S.-Canada border. Stations located in the contiguous 48 states and north of Line A (that is, in the strip nearest Canada) may not transmit in the 420 to 430 MHz segment, a coordination measure with Canada on that part of 70 centimeters.

Special Temporary Authority

The FCC may issue a Special Temporary Authority (STA) to an amateur station to provide for experimental amateur communications, a short-term permission to do something the standard rules would not otherwise allow, for the sake of experimentation.

Memory hook: spread spectrum lives "above 222 MHz"; the Line-A forbidden segment is "420 to 430 MHz." Two band numbers, two rules.