ok so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (general class) and i keep running into situations where im not sure if what im doing is actually allowed. like the other day someone told me i was transmitting too close to the edge of my band allocation and i honestly wasnt sure if they were right or wrong. i looked up part 97 and honestly its kind of dense to read through, i feel like i need a law degree to parse some of it.

my main questions are around like, how strict is the FCC actually about this stuff, are they actively monitoring or is it mostly other hams that police it. and also whats the deal with encrypted transmissions, someone in my club mentioned you cant encrypt anything but then someone else said theres exceptions. i dont want to accidentally do something wrong and lose my license over something dumb

the encryption thing is pretty clear actually, part 97.113 says you cant use codes or ciphers to obscure the meaning of your transmissions. the exception people sometimes bring up is things like space telecommand or some specific narrow cases, but for everyday operating on HF or VHF you just cant do it. plain and simple. people conflate this with digital modes sometimes but like FT8 or PSK31 arent encrypted, theyre just encoding, totally different thing and completely legal.

as for enforcement, the FCC honestly doesnt have a ton of resources dedicated to ham radio monitoring these days. that doesnt mean you should push it though. the ham community itself does a lot of the policing through things like the ARRL volunteer monitor program and honestly just other hams on the bands. getting a bad reputation in a local repeater community is probably a more immediate consequence than an FCC notice of violation for most people. that said the FCC absolutely can and does act on complaints, ive seen forfeitures issued for things like operating outside your license class privileges. just know your band plan and your license class limits and youll be fine 99% of the time

yeah the band edge thing is real, technically your signal including sidebands has to stay within your allocation so on like LSB you need to be a bit above the lower band edge so the sideband doesnt spill over. most rigs arent gonna let you tune right to the edge anyway but its worth keeping in mind. i messed this up early on too so dont feel bad