ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now as a general and i thought i understood the band plan but honestly the more i look at it the more confused i get. like on 40 meters i know theres a phone portion and a cw portion but where does phone actually start? and what does it mean when people say dont operate too close to the band edge? is there like a buffer zone or something?

i was trying to get on last weekend and heard a guy say something about the band edge and i felt like an idiot because i didnt really know what he meant. my radio shows me the frequency but im not 100% sure if thats the carrier frequency or what. been using an icom 7300 if that matters

yeah this trips up a lot of new generals, dont feel bad. on 40m as a general you can do phone from 7.225 up to 7.300 MHz. the 7.175 to 7.225 chunk is extra class only for phone. so basically stay above 7.225 and youre fine for voice.

the band edge thing is a real concern though. on USB the way it works is your carrier frequency is displayed but the actual signal extends upward in frequency, so if youre showing 7.300 on the dial you might actually have part of your signal going above the band edge which is a no-no. most people say stay at least 3 kHz inside the edge to be safe, so like 7.297 or lower. the 7300 should be showing you the suppressed carrier frequency so just keep that in mind and give yourself some room at the top

also just a heads up the ARRL band plan and the actual FCC allocations are two slightly different things. the band plan is kind of a gentleman's agreement for where certain modes tend to hang out, like digital modes cluster around certain spots, nets have their frequencies, etc. but the FCC part is what's actually legal. so you could technically operate phone anywhere in your licensed phone segment even if its not typical. people get weird about it on the air sometimes but you wont lose your license over it