so i passed my technician exam on tuesday and got my callsign thursday morning, spent like two hours just staring at it on the ULS page honestly. anyway my buddy who got me into all this told me to just get on the local repeater and say hi so i did and oh man like four or five people came back to me and one of them talked to me for almost twenty minutes about his antenna setup and how long hes been licensed and it was just really cool, way more welcoming than i expected. i was shaking a little on the mic which is embarrassing to admit but whatever. first QSO logged. now im already thinking about studying for general because apparently HF is where stuff really gets interesting

haha the shaky mic thing is totally real, i did the same thing. dont worry it goes away after like the third or fourth time. welcome to the hobby, the 2m repeater scene is actually a great place to start before you jump into HF which can get overwhelming fast. get that general ticket though seriously, it opens up so much more of the bands

congrats man. i remember my first qso on a local repeater, guy on the other end had been licensed since the 70s and he just started telling me about field day stories and i had no idea what field day even was yet lol. you'll figure it out. HF is a whole different world once you get there, in a good way mostly