so i finally did it after putting it off for like two years. passed my technician exam at the library and got my callsign in the FCC database within a couple days which was faster than i expected honestly. borrowed my neighbor's HT to get started and yesterday morning i keyed up on the local 2m repeater and just said my callsign and someone came back to me almost immediately. i was so nervous i forgot half of what i wanted to say lol. the guy on the other end was super patient though and we talked for maybe 10 minutes about nothing in particular, he asked me how i was doing, what got me into ham radio, the usual i guess. anyway just wanted to post somewhere because i feel like nobody in my real life understands why this is a big deal to me

congrats man, that first contact feeling is something else. i remember mine, i was shaking a little and completely blanked on the phonetic alphabet when he asked me to confirm my call. been licensed about 3 years now and i still get a little buzz when i work somewhere new. dont stress too much about not knowing what to say, everyone on the repeater knows youre new and most of them genuinely enjoy elmering newcomers. get on there as much as you can and youll find your rhythm pretty quick.

same thing happend to me last spring, people in my house thought i was being weird about it too. what HT did you borrow? im still trying to figure out which one to buy myself