ok so i passed my general exam about three weeks ago and ive been reading through part 97 trying to figure out exactly what im allowed to do now vs when i was tech. but honestly the way its written is kind of confusing to me. like i understand i have more HF privileges now but the band plan stuff and the actual FCC rules dont always seem to line up with what people online say.

specifically im confused about the 40 meter phone portion. some people say generals can use from 7.175 up but then i saw something else that said 7.225 and now im not sure which is right. also is the band plan an actual rule or just like a gentlemans agreement thing? my elmer told me one thing and the arrl website seems to say something slightly different. just want to make sure im not gonna transmit somewhere im not supposed to

the band plan and part 97 are two totally different things and that trips up a lot of people. part 97 is the actual law, the FCC stuff, and that defines your frequency privileges based on license class. the band plan is put out by the ARRL and its basically a gentleman's agreement like you said - nobody is legally required to follow it but most people do because it keeps things from turning into a mess.

for 40 meters specifically, general class phone privileges start at 7.175 MHz and go up to 7.300. that changed back in 2012 or so when the FCC expanded the HF allocations so some older references still show the old limits which is probably where the confusion is coming from. just go to the actual FCC part 97.301 and 97.305, those are the tables that matter. everything else is somebody's interpretation.

yeah i had the same exact confusion when i upgraded, the ARRL band plan has all these suggested sub-bands for cw and digital and ssb and whatever and i kept thinking i was gonna get in trouble for being in the wrong spot. took me a while to realize the FCC doesnt really care about that, they just care that youre in your licensed portion of the band and not running more power than your license allows and stuff like that. the band plan is more about not being that guy who parks an ssb signal right on top of where everyone does cw.