ok so i passed my general a few months ago and ive been trying to figure out the 40 meter band and where i'm actually allowed to transmit. like i know there's a chart somewhere but every time i look at it i get more confused. my understanding is that generals get phone privileges starting at 7.175 but then i keep hearing people say to stay away from the band edges and im not totally sure what that means practically speaking. like if the band goes up to 7.300 does that mean i shouldnt be transmitting right at 7.300 or just close to it? and what happens if my signal is wide enough that it bleeds over? i have a fairly basic radio and im not 100% sure how wide my signal actually is on SSB. just trying to not step on anything i shouldn't and also not accidentally transmit out of band

yeah the band edge thing trips a lot of people up. basically on SSB your signal isnt just a single frequency, it has width to it — typically somewhere around 2.4 to 3 kHz depending on your radio and how its set up. so if you're on upper sideband and you tune to say 7.299, your actual signal could be pushing up past 7.300 which would put part of it out of band. thats the part that matters to the FCC, not just where your dial says you are. most people say stay at least 3 kHz inside the band edge to be safe, so on 40m phone that'd mean not going above like 7.297 or so. the 7.175 lower limit for general phone is real, below that is extra class only on that band so yeah dont go there either. honestly just give yourself a comfortable buffer and you'll be fine, nobody's going to come knocking if you're being reasonable about it

also worth checking if your radio has any kind of ALC or if you're overdriving the mic at all because that can make your signal even wider than it should be and then you've got splatter going all over the place which is a whole other problem on top of the band edge thing. i learned this the hard way when someone finally told me my audio was pretty rough. but yeah what the other guy said about keeping a buffer from the edge is solid advice