okay so i just upgraded to general last month and im trying to figure out the 40 meter band. i understand technicians are limited but now that im general i can do more right? the thing is i keep seeing different numbers online and im not sure which ones are the actual legal limits vs just like... suggestions or whatever

also someone at my club mentioned something about staying away from the band edges and i didnt really understand why. like if 7.300 is the top of my allocation whats wrong with just operating right there? is it a legal thing or just a courtesy thing

sorry if this is a dumb question, ive only been on HF for like 3 weeks

not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of new generals. so the short version is the FCC allocations are the hard legal limits — for general on 40m phone youre looking at 7.175 to 7.300 MHz. go outside that and youre in trouble legally.

the band edge thing is a real practical concern though. your rig's displayed frequency is usually where your carrier or suppressed carrier sits, but your actual signal has sidebands that spread out from there. on SSB with upper sideband your signal is going to extend a few kHz above whatever frequency you're showing. so if you're sitting on 7.299 calling CQ, parts of your audio are probably spilling out past 7.300 into territory you're not supposed to be in. most experienced ops stay at least 3 kHz inside the edge to be safe, some say more depending on how wide your audio is.

the band plan stuff from ARRL is a bit different — thats more like gentleman's agreements about where to put certain modes. CW at the bottom, digital stuff in the middle, phone up top. not enforceable but people get cranky if you ignore it

yeah what he said about the sidebands is the main thing. i learned this the hard way when somebody came back to me and said i was bleeding over into some weird digital segment. was embarrassing. now i just mentally subtract a few kHz from whatever the edge is and call it good.

also worth noting that 40m is kind of a weird band internationally — the ITU regions have different allocations so if youre working DX sometimes the other station is operating perfectly legally on their end but theyre outside your allowed range. just something to be aware of, not really a problem for stateside stuff