International communication guidelines are intended to be permissive. Unless a country has notified the International Telecommunications Union, a United Nations agency, that it objects to FCC-licensed amateur stations exchanging communications with its citizens you may do so.

As of June 7, 2022, according to the FCC, there were "no banned countries". In other words, it is currently permissible for an FCC-licensed amateur to communicate with all countries.

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Tags: international itu rules and regulations section8.6

Broadcasting is a prohibited one way transmission.

Section 97.111(b) provides for one-way communications. In summary, auxiliary, beacon, space and stations in distress are specifically authorized to make certain one-way transmissions. Broadcasting is not included in this allowance.

Additionally, an amateur station may transmit the following types of one-way communications:

• Brief transmissions necessary to make adjustments to the station;
• Brief transmissions necessary for establishing two-way communications with other stations;
• Telecommand;
• Transmissions necessary to providing emergency communications;
• Transmissions necessary to assisting persons learning, or improving proficiency in, the international Morse code; Transmissions necessary to disseminate an information bulletin;
• and Telemetry.

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Tags: section8.6

Control commands may need ciphers or codes to prevent unauthorized users from controlling a radio control craft or space station; otherwise, you are never allowed to hide the meaning of a message.

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Tags: rules and regulations operating rules section8.6

The Amateur Radio service may retransmit the audio from manned spacecraft (such as the international space station). They often use music in that audio; because this music is incidental and in order to allow retransmission of the full program from the spacecraft an exception has been made to the "no music" rule for this purpose.

There is no other time when an amateur station is authorized to transmit music; this doesn't mean that you'll be prosecuted for transmitting when there is music in the background (particularly if you're helping with a parade or other community event where it is unavoidable) but you should avoid it when practical and it is never permissible to intentionally transmit snippets of music (of any length).

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Tags: rules and regulations best practices operating rules section8.6

While it is illegal to use Amateur Radio for profit, a limited exception is made to allow operators to offer equipment for sale with a few restrictions:

• Only on an occasional basis. If you have a stack of equipment you may offer it for sale, but you can't make a living selling salvaged ham radio equipment.

• Only to sell equipment that is part of a normal amateur station; it shouldn't be used to sell iPads, computers, other non-radio-related equipment, etc.

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Tags: rules and regulations operating rules section8.6

Though the FCC and ITU do not maintain a list of words which are considered "indecent or obscene", Part 97 still prohibits any such language on Amateur Radio. Like any such loosely-defined rule it is left up to the users of the service to determine what that means.

Keep in mind when transmitting -- no matter which band you're on -- that there may be small children listening and moderate your language accordingly! It is of course impossible to avoid offending everyone, but if someone is both considerate of others and patient with differing opinions things tend to work out just fine.

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Tags: section8.6

Auxiliary stations are defined as An amateur station, other than a message forwarding system, that is transmitting communications point-to-point within a system of cooperating amateur stations [97.3(a)(7)].

Repeater stations are defined as an amateur station that simultaneously retransmits the transmission of another amateur station on a different channel or channels [97.3(a)(39)]

Stations may automatically retransmit signals from either of these types of stations as well as signals from the space station, which is a concession designed to make it possible for stations to listen to space station transmissions and broadcasts that may otherwise be limited to only those with special equipment.

Beacon signals are only broadcasts and do not need to be retransmitted and "earth station" would be redundant with "repeater" since a repeater is an earth station, so the three distractors can be easily eliminated.

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Tags: rules and regulations operating rules station types auxiliary station space station section8.7

Amateur radio operators are prohibited from receiving compensation for their services. This exception allows a teacher to use a ham radio as part of their classroom instruction without being in violation of this prohibition in a legal sense.

In this case, the instructor is not being compensated directly for use of the radio but is being compensated for their duties as an instructor. Therefore, acting as a control operator for the amateur radio station cannot be a major part of their job, but must be incidental to other instruction.

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Tags: rules and regulations operating rules section8.2

The basic rule of thumb is that anything is allowed in an emergency if there is not a better way to solve the problem. Generally, amateur radio bands should be reserved for actual emergency communications during an emergency but if there is no other way to get news and such out during an emergency then Amateur Radio may be used for this purpose.

Other than in an emergency, there is never a time when broadcasts should be made over Amateur Radio; the only potentially confusing distractor on this question is the one relating to the space shuttle because it is allowed to retransmit transmissions from a space station; however, this asks about signals related to broadcasting, program production, or news gathering which is not the same as retransmitting a simple transmission from a space station intended for that purpose.

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Tags: rules and regulations operating rules emergency communication section8.6

Broadcasting is a term that is sometimes a bit touchy in the amateur radio community; FM radio stations broadcast radio programs and music to the general public; this is broadcasting, because there is never an expected response or a specific audience. Sometimes in Amateur Radio parts of a program are transmitted over amateur frequencies, but never as a regular "show", and never intended for the general public -- intended instead for ham radio operators. In addition, the rule of identifying every 10 minutes applies.

The primary difference between a broadcast and any other transmission is that a transmission has a specific audience -- even if it's "all amateur radio operators in the area". As an additional note, such transmissions (intended for all listening amateur radio operators) are usually prefixed with "QST" often repeated 3 times to indicate a general announcement for all operators.

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Tags: definitions section8.6

This is a bit of a trick question; under ordinary circumstances you always need to identify your station whenever you transmit (once every 10 minutes and at the end of a conversation).

However, an exception was made for remote controlling model craft where such identification might take valuable bandwidth needed to perform tasks such as keeping an airplane from crashing.

When using radio signals to remote control a model craft a label indicating the station callsign and the station licensee's name and address must be affixed to the station transmitter (most likely the radio control). See the relevant part 97 rules.

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Tags: section8.5