Sarah Chen

yeah i went through the same confusion when i upgraded, took me a while to sort out what was an actual rule vs what was just convention. one thing that helped me was just downloading the arrl band chart pdf and keeping it near the radio for a while. the other thing -- 7.245 is actually a pretty busy frequency, theres some nets that use it depending on time of day and region so that might have been what that guy was annoyed about, not so much the band edge thing. hard to say without knowing more context

just get your general already, problem solved lol. seriously though the tech HF privs are so limited its kind of frustrating, i remember sitting there with my tech ticket thinking i was gonna get on HF and then realizing how little i could actually do. the general exam really isnt that hard, i studied for maybe three weeks using hamStudy.org and passed no problem. then the whole HF world opens up.

Totally normal to feel that way your first few times, dont sweat it. The timing thing gets easier — most people wait about a second after the squelch tail drops before keying up, just enough to make sure the other person is really done. doubling happens to everyone, even guys who've been doing this for decades, especially on busy repeaters.
For phonetics it kind of depends on the net. Some nets are pretty casual and a quick callsign is fine, others are more formal and they expect full phonetics every time. just follow what the net control does and you'll fit right in. and yeah for announcements you usually just key up when they ask and say something like "W1XYZ, I have an announcement" and wait for them to acknowledge you before you go ahead. you'll get the hang of it fast, the first few check-ins are always the weirdest part