Ham Radio 101

Ham Radio Tips and Tricks

The unwritten rules nobody hands you with your license, the settings that trip up every new operator, and a cheat sheet you can print and keep by the radio.

Start Here

Nobody Is Born Knowing This

Ham radio comes with a whole set of habits that nobody writes down and everybody expects you to already know. You are going to key up too early, talk too close to the microphone, and say your own call sign in the wrong order. So did every operator who is listening when you do it.

What follows is the short version of what most of us picked up slowly, usually by being gently corrected on the air. None of it is regulation. All of it will make you sound like you have been doing this a while. There is a longer treatment of these habits, and how to build them on purpose rather than by embarrassment, in Ham Radio for Non-Techies.

On the Air

Working the Radio

Wait about half a second after you press the button before you start talking, especially through a repeater. The repeater needs that long to catch up with you, and it is why people keep missing your first word.
Hold the microphone four to six inches away and slightly off to the side. Talking straight into it the way they do in the movies is what makes you sound bloated and over-driven. Speak clearly at a normal volume; shouting does not help.
Your own call sign goes last. If you are KI5WTR calling KI5LMR, you say “KI5LMR, this is KI5WTR.” The other station first, yourself second.
On VHF and UHF, announce your call sign rather than calling CQ. Calling CQ is normal on the HF bands. On 2 meters and 70 centimeters, and especially on a repeater, just say who you are and that you are listening.
If someone says you sound scratchy, assume it is you first. Your location, your antenna orientation, your power, your equipment. Check your own end before you suggest theirs, and own the mistake when it turns out to be yours.
To join a conversation in progress, say your call sign between transmissions. Do not say “break” — that word is for something that is actually wrong. They will hear you and bring you in.
Leave a gap of a second or two after the other operator unkeys before you press yours. Somebody else may want to join, and somebody else may have an emergency.
Do not kerchunk. Keying a repeater over and over without identifying is illegal, and it irritates every single person listening to that machine. If you key up, say who you are.
Keep repeater conversations short. Most repeaters have a timeout — the one I use cuts off at two minutes. Break for a second every so often and you will never hit it.

Courtesy

Getting Along With People You Cannot See

Sound positive when you can. It is not always possible, but upbeat operators collect friends and negative ones quietly get avoided, even when the complaint is fair.
Nobody remembers your name at first. Do not take it personally — in a month you will be forgetting theirs. I kept a pen and paper next to the radio and wrote down call signs and names as I worked people. It helps more than you would think.
If someone offends you, let it go. Do not retaliate and do not try to embarrass them on the air. Be the adult in the exchange even if you happen to be a kid. Save the trolling for Facebook.
Think before you key up. Dead air while you work out what to say is time off somebody else’s evening.
Do not run other people down on the air. Whatever they hear you say about somebody else, they assume you will say about them. You are here to make friends.
Correct people privately. If you genuinely need to say something about another operator’s behavior, do it off the air, tactfully, and out of earshot.
Mute yourself before you cough. Burping, sniffing, throat-clearing and lip-smacking all come through beautifully. It is just gross.
Steer clear of politics and religion. Both get out of hand fast because everyone feels strongly, and there are a few thousand other subjects available.

Your Station

Looking After Your Equipment

Program the radio before you put it away, and keep a card or sheet with it listing what the channels actually are. Six months later those memory names will mean nothing to you. If the radio takes an SD card, back the codeplug up to it — that one habit will save you an evening eventually.
Learn to program it by hand. Software is faster right up until you are somewhere with no cell signal and no laptop, holding a radio you can only change from the front panel. If you want a walkthrough for your model, the Radio Rosetta tool covers the common handhelds.
Join a net that meets regularly. Weekly practice is what turns a radio you own into a radio you can actually work, and it teaches you the limits of your own station.
Keep the gear clean. You will hand somebody your microphone eventually, and clean controls keep working. You paid for it — look after it.

If a term on this page is new to you, the ham radio glossary defines the jargon in plain English, including PTT, kerchunking, simplex and duplex.

Reference

The ARRL Band Chart

This is the chart most operators keep taped inside a cabinet door. It shows every US band, who can use which part of it, and which modes are allowed where. Click it to see it full size.

Heads Up: the 60 Meter Part of That Chart Is Out of Date

The chart above is ARRL’s own and it is still the copy they publish — but it is the September 2017 revision, and 60 meters changed on February 13, 2026. Every other band on it is correct. This is the one place where trusting it will put you over the legal power limit.

What 60 meters actually looks like now:

Four channels — 5332.0, 5348.0, 5373.0, and 5405.0 kHz — at 100 watts ERP relative to a half-wave dipole. Center your signal on the channel.
One segment — 5351.5 to 5366.5 kHz — at 9.15 watts ERP. Tune anywhere you like inside it.
2.8 kHz maximum bandwidth everywhere on the band, General class and above only.

The trap is 5358.5 kHz. The old chart shows it as a fifth channel at 100 watts. That channel no longer exists. The frequency is still legal, because it sits inside the new 5351.5 to 5366.5 kHz segment — but the limit there is 9.15 watts, roughly a tenth of what the chart tells you.

Sources: 47 CFR 97.303(h)(3) and 97.313(i), and ARRL’s New 60-Meter Frequencies Available as of February 13.

At a Glance

Where the Bands Are

Every US amateur band and its outer edges. Which part of each band you can use depends on your license class — that is laid out band by band on Ham Frequencies by License.

Band	Frequencies	Who can use it
2200 m	135.7 – 137.8 kHz	General and above. 1 W EIRP, advance notice required.
630 m	472 – 479 kHz	General and above. 5 W EIRP, advance notice required.
160 m	1.800 – 2.000 MHz	General and above.
80 m	3.500 – 4.000 MHz	General and above. Technicians have a CW slice.
60 m	Four channels, plus 5351.5 – 5366.5 kHz	General and above. See the note above.
40 m	7.000 – 7.300 MHz	General and above. Technicians have a CW slice.
30 m	10.100 – 10.150 MHz	General and above. CW and data only, 200 W.
20 m	14.000 – 14.350 MHz	General and above.
17 m	18.068 – 18.168 MHz	General and above.
15 m	21.000 – 21.450 MHz	General and above. Technicians have a CW slice.
12 m	24.890 – 24.990 MHz	General and above.
10 m	28.000 – 29.700 MHz	All classes. Technicians get voice at 28.300 – 28.500.
6 m	50 – 54 MHz	All classes, all modes.
2 m	144 – 148 MHz	All classes, all modes.
1.25 m	222 – 225 MHz	All classes, all modes.
70 cm	420 – 450 MHz	All classes. Restricted near the Canadian border.
33 cm	902 – 928 MHz	All classes. Secondary allocation.
23 cm	1240 – 1300 MHz	All classes. Secondary allocation.

Print the Cheat Sheet

Two sides of one sheet, rewritten and re-checked in September 2026. Band privileges for all three license classes, the corrected 60 meter rules, antenna formulas, power limits, FM simplex calling frequencies, repeater offsets, DMR talkgroups and APRS — every figure verified against 47 CFR Part 97 and the ARRL band plan. It prints just as clearly in black and white as it does in color.

Keep Going

Next up: Ham Radio Glossary and Terminology — the jargon on this page, and a good deal more of it, explained without the engineering.

Also worth a look: what you can actually do with ham radio, Pocket Elmer for checking a frequency against your license on the spot, and the rest of the site.