ok so ive been studying the band plans and im getting pretty confused. i just upgraded to general last month and i know i have more privileges now but im not totally sure where i can and cant go on 40 meters. like i know theres a phone portion and a cw portion but every time i look it up i get a slightly different answer depending on what website im on and some of them look outdated.

also someone at my club meeting mentioned something about staying away from band edges and i didnt really understand why. is it just good practice or is there like an actual rule about it? i dont want to accidentally cause interference or worse get a notice from the FCC. my radio shows the frequency but i know the actual signal is wider than just that one number so maybe thats what they meant?

yeah the band edge thing trips up a lot of newcomers. basically the frequency your radio displays is usually the suppressed carrier frequency for SSB, so your actual signal is spreading out maybe 2.5 to 3 kHz above that (for USB). so if you tune to exactly 7.300 which is the top of the US general phone segment, your voice is actually going out past the band edge and thats a no-no. most people just stay at least 3 kHz inside the edge to be safe. so on 40m phone you'd want to be at 7.297 or lower to give yourself some room.

as for the general privileges on 40, you can operate phone from 7.175 up to 7.300 MHz. below 7.125 is extra class only for phone. CW you can do 7.025 to 7.125 i believe. the ARRL band plan on their website is probably the most reliable thing to look at, just make sure youre looking at the US version because ITU regions complicate things and some of those charts show worldwide allocations which dont apply here.

same thing happened to me when i upgraded lol. i was so paranoid my first few weeks i barely transmitted anywhere. what helped me was just downloading the actual FCC part 97 rules and ctrl-f searching for the frequency table, cuts through all the noise on random websites. also the ARRL has a wall chart you can order or just download the pdf version, i keep it open on my second monitor when im operating.