New General here, excited to start working HF! I've been reading about staying away from band edges when transmitting. Why exactly should I avoid operating right at the edge of my allocated frequencies? My radio seems perfectly capable of transmitting there. What's the technical reasoning behind this common advice?

Also, how far inside the band edges should I stay as a good practice? Looking for some practical guidance from experienced operators.

Three main reasons to stay away from band edges: calibration error in your radio, frequency drift as the transmitter warms up, and modulation sidebands extending beyond your carrier frequency. Most experienced hams stay at least a few kHz inside the band edges as a safety margin - better to err on the side of caution than risk an FCC citation for operating out of band!

Remember that legal doesn't always mean considerate - mode segments exist because different signals occupy the band differently, with narrow modes like CW needing less bandwidth than phone or image work. Always check your actual transmitted bandwidth, not just your carrier frequency.

Great question! I learned this the hard way when I was new - got a friendly reminder from another op that my SSB signal was drifting into the CW portion of 40m during a long ragchew. Now I always give myself that safety margin and focus on enjoying contacts without worrying about accidentally straying out of bounds.