so i passed my technician exam on tuesday and immediately ordered a baofeng (yeah i know, i know) and spent like three days just listening to the local repeater before i finally keyed up yesterday. i was so nervous i completely forgot to give my callsign at the end of the transmission and some guy had to remind me. KC3 something, super nice about it though. we chatted for maybe 5 minutes about the weather and my antenna setup (just the stock rubber duck for now) and then he said 73 and i sat there for like 20 seconds not knowing if i should say anything back. anyway i did eventually say 73 and that was that. felt kinda anticlimactic but also really cool? hard to explain. anyone else remember their first time keying up being weirdly stressful

haha yeah mine was terrible too, i was on a 2m net and the net control asked for check-ins and i just... froze. said my call wrong the first time. these things happen man, nobody cares as much as you think they do. the guys on local repeaters are usually pretty patient with new hams. once you get a few more contacts under your belt it becomes second nature. also dont sweat the baofeng thing, we all started somewhere

welcome to the hobby. my first qso i forgot to say over and just dead keyed for like two seconds before the other guy figured out i was done talking. its a right of passage i think. stick with it, once you get on HF its a whole different world