ok so i passed my general last month and im trying to figure out where i can actually transmit on 40 meters. ive been reading the band plan stuff on the arrl website but its kind of confusing with all the different modes and the phone vs cw segments and honestly i dont fully understand where the 'edges' are or why people keep saying dont operate too close to the band edge.

like i get that 7.125 to 7.300 is supposed to be the general phone segment but then someone on the repeater told me to stay away from 7.300 and i dont really know why. is it a legal thing or just like a courtesy thing? and whats the deal with the stuff below 7.125, is that just cw or can i ever transmit ssb down there

sorry if this is a dumb question im still figuring all this out

not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of new generals. so the short version is yeah 7.125 to 7.300 is your phone allocation as a general, but the reason people say stay away from 7.300 is because thats literally the top edge of the 40m allocation in the US and your radio's signal isnt perfectly clean right at the cutoff. theres gonna be some splatter or sidebands that could technically go outside the legal limit if youre right up against 7.300. most people just stay a few khz below to give themselves some breathing room, like 7.295 or so.

and yeah below 7.125 on 40m is cw and digital territory for generals. you'd need an extra class license to get into the 7.000 to 7.125 range on phone. the band plan stuff can be confusing because some of it is FCC rules (hard limits) and some of it is gentlemens agreement type stuff that the amateur community just kind of follows. the arrl band plan mixes both of those together which doesnt help clarity at all

yeah what he said about the band edge is right. i actually had an old timer explain it to me once as basically your rig has a filter but filters arent perfect so if you park right on 7.300 USB you might be technically putting energy above that and thats an FCC violation not just a faux pas. most modern rigs are pretty good about it but still not worth the risk for like half a khz of spectrum lol

also one thing i dont see mentioned much is that 7.290 is kind of an informal calling frequency for AM operators so if you go up around there you might run into that crowd doing their thing, not a legal thing just something to be aware of