This morning I spent some time calling CQ on 40 meters, clearly upsetting more than one "fellow ham". The reason being, I was transmitting on USB.
(some mil gear does not transmit on LSB, as most of you know)
I suppose these people who assume you are on the "wrong" sideband probably have no idea why it is customary to use LSB on 75 and 40 and USB on the higher frequencies. If they were to study a bit of amateur history, they would come to find out that the earliest home-brew transmitters used a mixing scheme that, by default, only worked LSB on the lower frequencies, and USB on the others. At that point in time, there were no commercial rigs (appliances) with those little USB LSB buttons.
Of course it is not a regulation to comply with the customary procedure. It might have been prudent for them to come back and question why you were on USB. Your situation is very similar to why we have that LSB/USB custom.
I guess the masses also do not understand why sometimes we transmit on both sidebands, and fail to properly suppress our carrier. Well, during the AM Rally two weeks ago, I found it a pleasure to be able to use my SDR to select either sideband, when there was some QRM on the alternate sideband. But when there was no QRM, synchronous AM detection was able to eliminate distortion due to selective fading. But that only works if all the folks in the round-table are close to zero-beat on the frequency. I suppose zero-beating is a lost art too.
I did not intend to hijack your thread, but it is ironic how the uninformed and uneducated become the self-appointed unofficial "Official Observers".
Have fun with that military gear. It is great to bring it back to life and recollect how it was originally used and just how long ago that was!