G1: Commission's Rules

The single biggest reward for upgrading to General is a flood of new operating room on the shortwave (HF) bands. But "more room" is not "all the room." Some slices stay reserved for the top license class. This group is about knowing exactly where you may and may not transmit.

A few words that come up over and over

Let's clear three terms first so the rest reads smoothly. HF ("high frequency") refers to the shortwave bands, roughly 3 to 30 MHz, the ones famous for bouncing off the sky and reaching across the world. MF ("medium frequency") is the band just below HF, where the 160-meter band lives. And a band segment just means a stretch within a band, the way a single highway can have a carpool lane, a truck lane, and a regular lane all on the same road. Different segments of a band are set aside for different things: voice, data, or Morse code.

The four bands where you do NOT get everything

Here is the headline fact the exam asks directly. On four of the HF/MF bands, a General does not get to transmit across the whole band, because the lowest portion is fenced off for Amateur Extra. Those four bands are 80 meters, 40 meters, 20 meters, and 15 meters. Memorize that exact foursome, because the same four bands are the answer to two different exam questions: they are the bands where Generals have portions they cannot use, and they are the bands that have segments allocated exclusively to Amateur Extra licensees. Same four bands, two questions.

The reserved zone always sits at the bottom (lowest-frequency) edge of those bands. So when a General is shut out of part of the voice portion of a band, the part you do get is the upper-frequency portion of that voice segment. Picture the band as a staircase: Extra gets the bottom steps, and you, as a General, stand on the steps above them. When in doubt, your privileges are higher up the band.

A worked example on 40 meters and 15 meters

• On the 40-meter band, the segment from 7.125 MHz to 7.175 MHz is Extra-only, so a General is prohibited from operating as control operator there. (The "control operator" is the licensed person responsible for a station's transmissions, a term you met as a Technician; we revisit it in group G1E.) If you saw 7.125 to 7.175 MHz offered as the place a General cannot run a station, that is the one to pick.
• On the 15-meter band, by contrast, 21300 kHz (the same as 21.300 MHz) sits comfortably inside the General portion. So that frequency is a "yes, you may operate here" example. Notice how the exam writes it in kilohertz to make you do the conversion: 21300 kHz is 21.3 MHz.

The 10-meter band: roomy for Generals

The 10-meter band (around 28 to 29.7 MHz) is generous. Two facts to keep:

• A station with a General class control operator may send Morse code (CW) across the entire 10-meter band. ("CW," for "continuous wave," is the rulebook's name for Morse code.) No Extra-only sub-segment for CW here, the whole band is open to you.
• Repeater use on 10 meters is allowed only in the portion above 29.5 MHz. (A repeater is the relay station that re-sends signals to extend range; more on those in G1E.) So repeaters live up near the top of the band.

Voice and image rules across bands

A couple of bands have special "no voice" or "no pictures" rules:

• On the 30-meter band (around 10.1 MHz), phone (voice) operation is prohibited. ("Phone" means voice, as you learned at Technician.) The 30-meter band is a narrow, data-and-CW-only band; you simply do not talk there.
• The 30-meter band is also the band where image transmission is prohibited. ("Image" means sending pictures, such as slow-scan TV or fax-like modes.) So 30 meters is the answer to both "where is phone banned" and "where are images banned."

Being a polite guest: secondary allocations

Hams do not own every band outright. On some bands we share the spectrum with other, non-amateur users, and the rules name one group the primary user and the other the secondary user. When the FCC makes the amateur service secondary on a band, the rule is firm and two-sided: amateur stations must not cause harmful interference to the primary users, and we must accept any interference the primary users cause us. Think of yourself as a guest in someone else's house, you stay out of their way, and you do not complain if they make noise. ("Harmful interference" is interference serious enough to disrupt or degrade another station's communications.)

This group is a grab-bag of practical rules: how tall your antenna tower may be before you owe the government a phone call, what beacon stations are and where they live, which transmissions are allowed and which are forbidden, and who decides what counts as "doing it right" when the rulebook is silent.

How tall can your antenna structure be?

Tall structures can be a hazard to aircraft, so there is a height at which you must alert the aviation authorities. The number to remember: an antenna structure may rise up to 200 feet above the ground, when it is not near a public-use airport, before you are required to notify the FAA (the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency in charge of the skies) and register the structure with the FCC. Below 200 feet and away from airports, no special notification is needed. (Near an airport, stricter rules kick in, but the plain "200 feet" figure is the one the exam wants.)

When can your town regulate your antenna?

State and local governments are allowed to have antenna rules, but only within tight limits set by a famous FCC policy. State and local antenna regulations must reasonably accommodate amateur radio communications, and they must be the minimum practical regulation needed to accomplish the community's legitimate purpose. In plain words: a town may have reasonable rules (for safety or appearance), but it cannot effectively ban ham antennas, and it must use the lightest touch that still meets its real goal. The hobby has to be reasonably accommodated.

Beacon stations: lighthouses for propagation

A beacon is a station that automatically sends a steady, repeating signal so other operators can listen for it and judge how radio waves are traveling right now. Its stated purpose in the rules is the observation of propagation and reception, that is, helping people see how far and how well signals are getting through. ("Propagation" is the word for how radio waves travel.) A few specific rules:

• Power limit: a beacon station may run no more than 100 watts PEP output. (We define PEP in group G1C; for now read it as "the way we measure transmitter power.") Beacons are meant to be modest, not blasting.
• One per band per location: no more than one beacon station may transmit in the same band from the same station location. You do not get to stack several beacons on one band at one site.
• Where on HF: automatically controlled beacons are permitted on 10 meters from 28.20 MHz to 28.30 MHz. That is their designated home on the high-frequency bands.

Frequencies to leave alone for beacons

There is an organized network of propagation beacons that sit on a handful of specific frequencies across several bands. You should normally avoid transmitting on 14.100, 18.110, 21.150, 24.930, and 28.200 MHz for exactly that reason: a system of propagation beacon stations operates on those frequencies. Tuning your own signal onto one of those would step on the very beacons people rely on to read the band. Give them a wide berth.

Transmissions that ARE allowed

A couple of one-way or relayed transmissions that might feel borderline are actually fine:

• Relaying official weather and propagation forecasts: all amateur stations may make the occasional retransmission of weather and propagation forecast information from U.S. government stations. So passing along an official forecast now and then is permitted (just not as a constant broadcast).
• Morse code practice: among one-way transmissions, the permitted kind includes transmissions to assist with learning the International Morse code. Sending code-practice for learners is explicitly allowed.

Abbreviations and procedural signals

Hams love shorthand, and that is fine, with one catch. Abbreviations and procedural signals (short codes like "73" for best wishes, or "Q-signals") may be used as long as they do not obscure the meaning of the message. The line is simple: shorthand to save time, good; codes meant to hide what you are really saying, not good. Keep it understandable.

Talking to other countries

You may contact amateurs in nearly every country. The one limit: you may communicate with stations outside FCC-administered areas except in countries whose governments have notified the ITU that they object to such communications. ("ITU" is the International Telecommunication Union, the worldwide body that coordinates radio among nations.) If a country has formally told the ITU "no thanks," you respect that; otherwise the world is open to you.

When the rulebook is silent: good engineering and good amateur practice

No rulebook can spell out every situation. For anything Part 97 does not specifically cover, operations are still expected to follow "good engineering and good amateur practice." And who gets to decide what that means? The FCC. When a question asks who determines good engineering and good amateur practice in matters the rules do not address, the answer is the FCC, the same agency that wrote the rest of the rules.

This group answers "how much power may I use, and how do we even measure it?", explains the unusual little 60-meter band with its own rulebook, and covers what you must do before putting a brand-new digital mode on the air.

How power is measured: PEP

Start with the measuring stick, because every power limit uses it. The FCC measures maximum power as PEP output from the transmitter. PEP stands for Peak Envelope Power, a fair way to capture the strongest moments of your transmitted signal, measured at the output of the transmitter. You do not need the deep electronics here; just know that when the rules say "1500 watts," they mean 1500 watts PEP output, not some average and not the power going into the final amplifier.

The general power limit, and the exceptions

The everyday maximum across most amateur bands is 1500 watts PEP output. Several exam questions are really just checking that you know this number applies to specific bands:

• On the 12-meter band: the limit is 1500 watts PEP output.
• On the 28 MHz (10-meter) band for a General control operator: 1500 watts PEP output.
• On the 1.8 MHz (160-meter) band: 1500 watts PEP output.

The notable exception is the narrow 30-meter band. On a frequency like 10.140 MHz (which is in the 30-meter band), the maximum is only 200 watts PEP output. So 30 meters is special on three counts: no voice, no images (from group G1B), and a lower 200-watt power cap. It is a quiet, low-power, data-and-CW band by design.

Memory trick: 30 meters is the "gentle" band, low power (200 watts), and no talking or pictures.

The 60-meter band: a band with its own rulebook

The 60-meter band (around 5.3 MHz) is unusual: instead of a wide-open band, it is run with extra restrictions because amateurs share it closely with government users. Two specific rules the exam wants:

• Bandwidth limit on voice: for stations transmitting on the upper-sideband (USB) voice frequencies in 60 meters, the maximum signal width allowed is 2.8 kHz. ("Bandwidth" is how wide your signal is; "USB" is the standard voice mode used here.) Your signal must fit within that 2.8 kHz width.
• Antenna record-keeping: if you use any antenna other than a simple dipole on 60 meters, you must keep a record of that antenna's gain. (A "dipole" is the basic, common wire antenna; "gain" is how much an antenna concentrates your signal in a direction.) The rule exists so you can prove you are not exceeding the effective power allowed on this tightly shared band.

Putting a new digital protocol on the air

Ham radio encourages experimenting with new digital modes, but openness is a core value, no secret systems. So before you use a new digital protocol on the air (a "protocol" is the agreed set of rules a digital mode uses to encode and exchange data), you must first publicly document the technical characteristics of that protocol. In other words, you have to publish how it works so that other hams can understand and decode it. That keeps the airwaves open and transparent rather than full of mystery signals nobody can interpret.

This group covers the people and paperwork around upgrading: who runs the exams (Volunteer Examiners), how you get credit for elements you have already passed, what temporary call-sign add-on you use while waiting for your upgrade to post, and which country's rules apply when you operate a station from far away.

Volunteer Examiners and the people who accredit them

Amateur exams are not run by the FCC directly; they are run by licensed volunteers called Volunteer Examiners (VEs). Those VEs are in turn approved (the word is "accredited") by a Volunteer Examiner Coordinator (VEC), an organization the FCC authorizes to oversee testing. So when a question asks who accredits Volunteer Examiners, the answer is a Volunteer Examiner Coordinator. Several rules govern who may be a VE:

• Minimum age: you must be at least 18 years old to be an accredited VE.
• License needed to give which exams: a VE may only administer exams below their own license level. A VE who holds a General class license may administer the Technician exam only. (To give the General exam you would need to be an Amateur Extra.)
• How many VEs run an exam: a Technician license exam session must be observed by at least three Volunteer Examiners of General class or higher. Three sets of eyes, minimum.
• Non-U.S. citizens: a non-citizen may be an accredited VE, provided they hold an FCC-granted amateur license of General class or above. Citizenship is not the requirement; holding the right FCC license is.

The CSCE: your proof of a fresh pass

When you pass an exam element at a test session, you receive a Certificate of Successful Completion of Examination (CSCE), a paper proving you passed. It does two useful things, but each has its own time limit, and the exam loves to mix them up, so keep them separate:

• As element credit: a CSCE is valid for 365 days. So if you pass one element but not another, you have a year to come back and finish the rest while still getting credit for what you already passed.
• As temporary operating authority: if you are a Technician with an unexpired CSCE for General privileges, you may immediately operate on any General or Technician class band segment, even before the upgrade officially posts. You do not have to wait for the database to start enjoying your new privileges.

Signing "AG" while you wait

There is a catch to operating on your new privileges before the FCC database shows the upgrade: you must announce that you are doing so. Until your upgrade to General appears in the FCC database, a Technician licensee must add the indicator "AG" after their call sign whenever they operate using General class frequency privileges. ("AG" simply signals "Authorized General.") Once the upgrade posts in the database, you drop the "AG" and just use your call sign normally.

Credit for a license that lapsed

What if you (or someone) held a license years ago and let it lapse? The rules are forgiving:

• Partial element credit: any person who can prove they once held an FCC-issued General, Advanced, or Amateur Extra license that was not revoked may receive partial credit for the elements that license represented. Old experience is not thrown away.
• After the grace period is gone: if a license expired and the two-year grace period has also passed, getting a new General license requires showing proof of the appropriate expired license grant and passing the current Element 2 (Technician) exam. (Element 2 is the Technician written exam.) You re-establish your footing at the entry level, then build back up with whatever credit your old license earns you.

Operating from far away: which rules apply?

Modern radios can be run over the internet from anywhere, which raises the question of whose laws govern the operation. Two cases the exam asks:

• Running a U.S. station by remote control from outside the country: the control operator must hold a U.S. operator/primary station license. You cannot remotely run a U.S. station without the proper U.S. license, no matter where your hands physically are.
• Running a station in another country (say, in South America) by remote control over the internet from the U.S.: only the regulations of the country where the remote station is located apply. The transmitter's physical location is what counts, so a station sitting in South America follows South American rules, not FCC rules.

This final group of G1 ties together how stations are controlled, the responsibilities around repeaters, the rules for relaying messages on behalf of other people, the worldwide region system that shapes our band plans, and a few specialized digital and low-power modes.

A quick refresher on controlling a station

From your Technician studies: the control operator is the licensed person responsible for a station's transmissions, and there are three ways a station can be controlled. Local control means you are right there at the radio. Remote control means you run it from a distance through some link, such as the internet. Automatic control means the station runs itself within the rules with no operator working the controls every moment, the way a repeater does. Hold those three in mind, because this group leans on them.

Repeaters and license class

A repeater receives a signal on one frequency and simultaneously retransmits it on another, extending the range of small radios. Here is a subtle responsibility rule the exam asks: when may a 10-meter repeater retransmit the 2-meter signal of a station whose control operator is only a Technician? The answer turns on the repeater itself: it is allowed only if the 10-meter repeater's own control operator holds at least a General class license. The original station's operator can be a Technician; what matters is that the repeater relaying onto 10 meters is itself run by someone licensed for that band. The repeater's control operator carries the responsibility for what the repeater puts out.

Third-party communications

A third-party communication is a message you relay on behalf of someone who is not one of the two licensed operators in the contact, for example, letting a non-ham friend pass greetings to a distant station through your radio. A few rules:

• Who is disqualified from being the third party: a person may not participate as a third party if their own amateur license has been revoked and not reinstated. The system will not let someone who lost their license sneak back on the air by speaking through someone else's station.
• What such messages may contain (with a Third-Party Agreement country): when there is a Third-Party Agreement with the other country (a standing deal between two nations to allow relaying messages for non-hams), the messages must relate to amateur radio, or be remarks of a personal character, or relate to emergencies or disaster relief. Hobby talk, friendly personal notes, and emergency traffic, yes; business or public broadcasting, no.
• Relaying third-party messages by remote control: third-party messages may be sent via remote control under any circumstances in which third-party messages are otherwise permitted by the FCC rules. In short, remote control does not add any special restriction here, if the message would be legal in person, it is legal by remote control.

The ITU region system

The world is divided into three large zones for radio purposes, set by the ITU (the International Telecommunication Union from group G1B), and each zone has slightly different band allocations. North and South America fall in Region 2. So when a question asks which ITU region's frequency allocations apply to amateurs operating in the Americas, the answer is Region 2. This is why band plans here can differ from those in Europe or Asia.

Avoiding harmful interference

There are several situations that all require an operator to take active steps to avoid harmful interference to other users or facilities. Because more than one such situation exists, the exam's correct choice is simply "all of these choices are correct." The takeaway is the principle itself: whenever your operating could disrupt other authorized users, the responsibility is on you to take specific steps to prevent it.

Automatically controlled digital stations

Digital stations (sending RTTY or data) can be set up to run under automatic control, transmitting without an operator at the controls each moment. Two rules:

• Where automatic digital stations may talk to each other: automatically controlled stations sending RTTY or data may communicate with other automatically controlled digital stations anywhere in the 6-meter or shorter-wavelength bands, and in limited segments of some HF bands. (RTTY means "radioteletype," an older but still-used digital text mode.) So the higher bands are wide open for this, while HF only allows it in certain set-aside segments.
• Reaching an automatic digital station outside those segments: to communicate with a digital station that is under automatic control outside the designated automatic-control segments, the station starting the contact must itself be under local or remote control. The initiating station needs a human steering it, locally or remotely, rather than running fully automatically.

Two specialized modes

• Spread spectrum power: spread-spectrum is a technique that smears a signal across a wide range of frequencies. Its maximum is a very low 10 watts PEP output, far below normal limits, precisely because it occupies so much spectrum.
• Wi-Fi on 2.4 GHz: although hams share part of the 2.4 GHz band, an amateur station may communicate with non-licensed consumer Wi-Fi devices in no part of that band. The amateur service and unlicensed Wi-Fi are separate worlds, even where their frequencies overlap; you do not bridge the two.