What You May — and May Not — Transmit

1. Amateur Radio is not broadcasting

In Part 97, broadcasting means transmissions intended for reception by the general public, and broadcasting is not an ordinary permitted amateur use. Some one-way transmissions are allowed — such as code practice, telemetry, telecommand, and certain informational or emergency transmissions — but broadcasting is the important prohibited case.

International communication is generally allowed, except with a country whose administration has notified the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) that it objects to such communications.

2. Do not hide the meaning

Amateur stations generally may not transmit messages encoded specifically to obscure their meaning. The narrow tested exception is control commands to space stations or model craft. Published digital modes are not automatically secret simply because a computer decodes them; the issue is deliberately obscuring the message.

3. Business, compensation, music, and news gathering

You may occasionally tell other amateurs that your own amateur-radio equipment is for sale or trade when selling amateur radio equipment and not on a regular basis. Amateur Radio is not a regular business channel.

Compensation is normally prohibited, but the pool includes the exception where the communication is part of classroom instruction at an educational institution. Music is allowed only when it is incidental to an authorized retransmission of manned spacecraft communications.

Amateur stations may support broadcasting, program production, or news gathering when no other means is available and the communication is directly related to the immediate safety of human life or protection of property. Indecent or obscene language is prohibited.

4. Auxiliary stations, model control, and test transmissions

An auxiliary station can be a station sending one-way transmissions between a remote repeater receiver and the main repeater transmitter. That is a control/support function, not broadcasting to the public.

A station may transmit without normal on-air identification when transmitting signals to control model craft. For ordinary on-air testing, however, you must identify the transmitting station.