General License Upgrade: HF Privileges

What HF Adds

Your Technician license with a VHF/UHF radio gives you local communication — excellent for neighborhood coordination, municipal emergency nets, and keeping in touch within a 10-100 mile radius via repeaters.

HF radio reaches across the continent by a completely different mechanism. VHF/UHF travels in essentially straight lines — you need an unobstructed path or a repeater to relay the signal. HF signals bounce off the ionosphere — the charged layer of the upper atmosphere — and return to earth hundreds or thousands of miles away.

A 100-watt signal on 40 meters from your home in Phoenix can reach a receiver in Boston. No repeater needed. No infrastructure required. Just the ionosphere, which has been reflecting radio waves reliably since before any of this infrastructure existed.

The Critical HF Bands for Emergency Use

40 meters (7.0-7.300 MHz): The workhorse emergency band. During the day, 40m reliably covers 500-1,500 miles. At night, the ionosphere changes and 40m extends to 2,000-3,000 miles or more. For coast-to-coast communication within the continental US, 40m in the evening is the standard.

The emergency voice calling frequency is 7.230 MHz (in Region 2, which covers the Americas). The General class phone privileges begin at 7.175 MHz.

80 meters (3.5-4.000 MHz): Regional communication band. Excellent at night within 500-1,000 miles. Used for state and regional emergency nets. Phone privileges for General start at 3.800 MHz.

20 meters (14.000-14.350 MHz): International communication. Daytime propagation to Europe, South America, and the Pacific. Less consistent than 40m for emergency domestic use but important for international connectivity.

The General Exam

The General question pool covers:

• G1: FCC Rules for General class privileges
• G2: Operating procedures, HF operating
• G3: Radio wave propagation (the ionosphere, sky wave, ground wave)
• G4: Amateur radio practices, HF station setup
• G5: Electrical principles (more complex than Technician)
• G6: Circuit components (transmission lines, filters)
• G7: Practical circuits (power supply, digital modes equipment)
• G8: Signals and emissions
• G9: Antennas and feed lines (much more detail than Technician)
• G0: Safety

What's harder than Technician: Propagation theory (understanding when/why HF works and what affects it), antenna theory (impedance, feed lines, SWR), and more complex electrical circuits.

Study approach: Same as Technician — hamstudy.org, focus on weak areas. Plan 15-20 more study hours than Technician required. Most Technicians pass General on their first attempt after 3-5 weeks of study.

HF Equipment

The Radio

Entry level ($700-1,100 new, $400-700 used):

• Icom IC-7300: Most popular entry HF radio. 100W, SDR-based, excellent receiver, built-in tuner, good display. The benchmark for entry-level HF.
• Yaesu FT-991A: All-mode, all-band including VHF/UHF. Excellent for a station that does everything.
• Kenwood TS-590SG: Excellent receiver sensitivity, popular for digital modes.

Used market: The used HF market on QRZ.com forums, eHam, and eBay is large. Quality used HF radios from reputable brands (Icom, Yaesu, Kenwood) are generally reliable. Avoid unknown brands and radios without manuals.

Lower budget: Xiegu G90 or X6100 ($400-550 new) are Chinese-made radios with decent performance at significantly lower cost. Less receiver sensitivity than Icom or Yaesu but functional for emergency communication.

Antennas

Wire dipole (simplest and cheapest):

• Center-fed wire cut to the wavelength of your target band
• 40m dipole: each leg is approximately 33 feet (total ~66 feet of wire)
• Hung between two supports (trees, masts, poles) at any convenient height
• Materials cost: $15-30 (wire, connectors, insulators)

Commercial options:

• Buddipole: lightweight, portable, adjustable ($200)
• MyAntennas EFHW: end-fed half-wave, simple installation, works on multiple bands ($80-150)
• Alpha Delta DX-A: all-band wire, parallel feeders, durable ($130)

Antenna height: Higher is better but any height works. Even a 40m dipole at 15 feet provides regional HF communication. At 30-40 feet, performance improves significantly.

Power

HF radios run from 12-16V DC. A quality power supply (Rigrunner, Samlex, MFJ) for fixed home use costs $80-150. For portable or emergency use, a 100Ah LiFePO4 battery bank provides 1-3 hours of 100W operation or many hours at lower power.

100W is the standard HF power level. For emergency communication, 25-50W is usually sufficient for regional contacts. Lower power extends battery life when running off stored power.

When You Actually Need It

An HF station becomes important when:

• The emergency affects your entire region (city-wide or state-wide disaster)
• You need to contact family outside the affected area
• Local VHF/UHF repeaters are down and you need to reach farther
• You want to receive information from outside the disaster zone

The Winlink network (see the Winlink article) allows email over HF radio — sending and receiving text messages with no internet required. In an extended grid-down scenario, this is one of the few ways to exchange information with the outside world.

Getting your General license and building even a basic HF capability — an IC-7300, a wire dipole, and a battery bank — creates a communication option that is genuinely independent of all infrastructure.