ok so i passed my general a few weeks ago and ive been trying to figure out the 40m band but honestly the band plan stuff is confusing me more than i expected. like i know theres a chart somewhere but when i look at it i dont understand if those are hard limits or just recommendations or what. my elmer told me generals can operate phone starting at 7.175 but then i saw people talking on like 7.230 and someone in another thread said the band edge is somewhere around 7.300. so is everything between 7.175 and 7.300 fair game for me or are there spots i should avoid? also heard something about the ARRL band plan being different from the actual FCC allocations and now im really lost. just want to know where i can actually talk without stepping on someone or doing something wrong

yeah the FCC allocation and the ARRL band plan are two different things and that trips up a lot of new generals. the FCC part is the actual legal limit — for 40m phone as a general you can operate from 7.175 up to 7.300 MHz, that's the hard legal edge and you cannot go above 7.300, like at all. now within that range the ARRL band plan is more of a gentlemans agreement, so there are certain frequencies that are kind of traditionally used for certain things like 7.290 is often a maritime mobile net and some frequencies are used by specific regional nets. you dont have to follow those but its good practice and you'll catch less flak from old timers if you check the band plan before just plopping down somewhere. the main thing is just dont operate outside 7.175 to 7.300 on phone and you're legally fine, everything else is just courtesy stuff.

one thing i'd add is be really careful near the band edges. like dont try to set your dial to exactly 7.300 because your signal will have sidebands that extend above that and technically part of your transmission could be out of band. most people stay at least a few kHz inside the edge just to be safe, so like 7.295 or so as a practical upper limit when running SSB. caught me off guard when i first got my general too, i thought the dial frequency was all that mattered but its actually where your signal occupies in the spectrum that counts. someone explained it to me as the carrier isnt the whole story with sideband, which i guess makes sense once you think about it