ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i keep getting confused about where i can actually operate on 40 meters. like i know theres a chart somewhere but every time i look at it i get more confused not less. my buddy told me generals can use most of 40 but then i heard someone on the radio saying something about the lower end being phone only or ssb only or something and i dont want to accidentally transmit somewhere i shouldnt be.

also whats the deal with band edges, someone in my local club said to stay away from the very bottom and top of the band but didnt really explain why. is that a rule or just like a courtesy thing? i mostly want to do some ssb ragchewing if that matters

so for 40m as a general you can do phone (SSB) from 7.175 up to 7.300, that's your chunk. extras get the whole phone portion starting lower at 7.125 but dont worry about that for now. the CW guys hang out down at the bottom of the band, like below 7.125 or so, and as a general you can do CW down there too actually, just not phone.

the band edge thing is real and worth taking seriously. if you're sitting right at 7.300 and your signal has any kind of splatter or your rig isnt perfectly calibrated you could be transmitting outside the allocation which is an FCC no-no. most people just stay a few khz inside to be safe. i usually wont go above 7.295 or so just to give myself some room. it's not a huge deal but its one of those things where theres no reason to push it, you know?

yeah what he said about band edges. i actually asked almost the exact same question when i got my general lol. the ARRL band plan chart is the one you want, just google it and find the pdf version, the website version is kind of a mess to read. once you see it laid out with the colors it actually makes way more sense than trying to read it as text.