ok so i just upgraded to general last month and im trying to figure out the 40 meter band. i know technicians are pretty limited but now i have more privileges and honestly the FCC part 97 stuff is kind of confusing to read through. like i understand there are certain segments for phone vs cw but what i dont get is how close to the band edge you can actually get. my buddy told me you should never transmit right at 7.300 because your signal bleeds over but then someone else said thats just a courtesy thing not a rule. also is the ARRL band plan the actual law or is that just a suggestion? because i keep seeing people operating in spots that dont match the chart i printed out. sorry if this is a dumb question just want to make sure im doing this right before i get on the air more

not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of newly upgraded generals. so the short answer is the ARRL band plan is NOT law, its a gentlemans agreement basically. the actual rules are in part 97 and those define the subbands by license class. for general on 40m phone you get 7.175 to 7.300 MHz. now here's the thing about band edges that your buddy was getting at -- the rule is actually that your signal has to stay within the allocation, not just your carrier frequency. so if youre running SSB, the transmitted bandwidth can be like 3kHz wide, which means if you park your dial at 7.300 you might have sideband energy going above that. thats a real violation not just a courtesy issue. most people stay at least 3-5 kHz inside the edge to be safe, so 7.295 or lower for upper sideband. the ITU regions also complicate 40m because the band goes to 7.200 in some parts of the world, which is why you sometimes hear stuff that seems out of place

yeah what he said about the band edge is right, i learned that the hard way when someone on a net pointed out i was too close to the edge. embarasing. one thing i'll add is dont stress too much about people operating in weird spots, sometimes its DX stations from regions with different allocations, sometimes its just people who dont know better. the 40m digital segment around 7.040-7.060 area gets messy too because people wander in there with SSB which drives the FT8 crowd nuts. anyway just stay a few kHz inside wherever the band plan shows and you'll be fine