ok so i finally upgraded to general last month and im trying to figure out where i can actually operate on 40 meters. ive been reading the band plan but honestly it doesnt totally make sense to me. like i know there are segments for phone and cw but when people talk about band edges im not sure what that means practically speaking. am i supposed to stay like a few khz away from the edge or what? and also i keep hearing people say dont operate at the band edge but i see people doing it all the time on the waterfall. is there a hard line or more of a gentlemens agreement type thing? i dont want to accidentally transmit somewhere i shouldnt or step on someone elses qso. also does it matter if its usb or lsb in terms of where my actual signal ends up? ive been mostly just listening so far but want to start making some contacts soon

yeah the band edge thing trips up a lot of new generals. so the hard legal limit on 40m for general phone is 7.175 MHz on the low end, meaning you cant use voice below that. but heres the thing people forget - when you set your dial to say 7.175 and youre on LSB, your actual signal is spreading downward from that point. so if youre on 7.175 LSB your signal is actually going from roughly 7.172 to 7.175. that means you technically need to set your dial a few kHz above the edge to keep your whole signal inside the allocation. most people say stay at least 3 kHz inside just to be safe. the FCC looks at where your signal actually is, not where your VFO says. i learned this the hard way when someone pointed it out to me early on, saved me a lot of potential headaches.

just to add on to what the other guy said - the band plans you see from ARRL arent always the same as the actual FCC allocations. like the band plan is more of a gentleman's agreement on who uses what part of the band, so cw hangs out down low, digital modes have their spots, phone is up higher. but the FCC part is the actual law. so yeah theres kind of two layers to it which is confusing at first. and honestly dont stress too much about it, just start a few kHz inside whatever the limit is and youll be fine. ive been on 40m for years and the main thing i see is people accidentally going too close to 7.125 where the novice/tech cw starts and causing interference, that one catches people off guard sometimes