ok so i finally passed my general last month and ive been trying to figure out where i can actually transmit on 40 meters. i know theres a chart somewhere but honestly it confuses me more than it helps. like i see people say dont operate near the band edges but nobody explains why or what counts as near. i was going to try some SSB around 7.250 but then someone in a net said something about staying away from 7.300 and i didnt really understand what they meant. is 7.250 fine or am i going to accidentally stomp on someone important or go out of my allocation or something

so the short version is as a general you can use SSB on 40m from 7.175 up to 7.300, and 7.300 is the actual band edge so you dont want to operate right there because if your signal is wide or your rig drifts even a little youre technically outside the ham allocation. most people say stay at least 3 or 4 kHz inside the edge just to be safe, so like 7.295 or so as an upper limit in practice. 7.250 is totally fine, thats right in the middle of the general SSB portion. the lower part of the band below 7.175 is extra class only for phone so dont go there for voice. below that its CW and digital territory. youre not going to accidentally stomp on anything critical at 7.250, thats pretty normal everyday SSB territory

yeah the band edge thing tripped me up too when i upgraded. basically the issue is that 7.300 is where the ITU allocation ends and if your carrier is at 7.300 your upper sideband is actually going past it which puts part of your signal outside the band. so the FCC considers your suppressed carrier frequency but still, most rigs when you tune to 7.300 and transmit USB you are already partly out of bounds. i just keep a mental note to not go above like 7.298 to be safe. same thing applies on the low end of any band, its not just 40m