ok so i passed my general exam back in march and ive been kind of afraid to transmit because im not 100% sure where i'm allowed to operate. i know there are band plans and then theres the actual FCC part 97 rules and i keep reading stuff online that contradicts each other. like someone in a facebook group told me generals cant use certain parts of 40m for phone but then someone else said that was outdated info. i looked at the actual part 97 subpart d or whatever and it's honestly kind of hard to parse if you're not used to reading legal documents. is there like a plain english breakdown somewhere that's actually current? and does the arrl band plan have any legal weight or is it just a gentlemans agreement type thing

the ARRL band plan has zero regulatory teeth, its purely voluntary and based on tradition and trying to keep things organized. the actual legal limits come from part 97.301 and 97.305 which define privileges by license class. for general on 40m phone youre looking at 7.175 to 7.300 MHz, extra class has the whole chunk down to 7.125. so there is a real restriction there, that facebook person wasnt totally wrong just maybe not explaining it well. the FCC rules themselves are the only thing that matters legally speaking. i'd bookmark the actual ecfr.gov page for part 97 and just ctrl+f whatever youre looking for, takes some getting used to but its not that bad once you read it a few times

yeah i was in the same boat when i upgraded. honestly what helped me was just downloading the arrl operating manual and also theres a chart they publish every year showing the band allocations visually by license class. way easier than staring at the actual regulatory text. just double check the date on whatever chart you find because the allocations did change a while back and some old pdfs are still floating around out there