so i passed my technician exam last thursday and literally the same night i was on 2m with a cheap baofeng i borrowed from my buddy. i had no idea what i was doing, forgot to say my callsign at the end of the transmission like three times and the guy on the other end had to remind me. super embarrassing but he was really cool about it and we talked for like 20 minutes about antennas and stuff. i didnt understand half of what he said but i was just happy to be on the air for real finally.

anyway i just wanted to say hi to everyone here, ive been lurking this forum for a few months while i was studying and you all helped me a lot without even knowing it. now i gotta figure out what radio to actually buy because i cant borrow my friends forever

congrats on the ticket, welcome to the hobby. dont sweat the callsign thing, everybody does that at first, i forgot mine mid-sentence on my very first contact and just kind of trailed off into silence. the other op waited patiently and then very kindly said "and your callsign?" which i still cringe about. you get the hang of it fast though.

as for the radio, before you spend money on anything just figure out what you actually want to do. if its just local repeaters and maybe some simplex then an entry level handheld or a basic mobile rig is totally fine. but if you think you might want HF eventually just know that technicians are limited up there so you might want to think about upgrading sooner rather than later. either way youre off to a good start

haha same thing happened to me, i was so nervous on my first qso i gave my callsign wrong, like i transposed two letters. the guy was confused and asked me to repeat and i panicked even more. good times. youll be fine just get on the air as much as you can