so i passed my technician exam last thursday and honestly didnt think id pass because i blanked on like half the electrical questions but somehow scraped through. anyway i borrowed my buddys baofeng to try and hit the local 2m repeater and man i had no idea what i was doing. keyed up and forgot to say anything for like 3 seconds and then just said my callsign wrong, like i transposed two letters. the guy on the other end was super patient though and we actually had a decent little chat for about 10 minutes. he told me i was getting out fine and signal was good so that was something at least. now ive been lurking on the repeater every evening just listening and trying to get the hang of how people actually talk on there because its way different than i imagined. anyone else remember their first QSO being kind of a trainwreck

haha yeah mine was terrible too, i called CQ on 40m like two days after getting my general and some DX station came back to me and i panicked and just started reading my callsign over and over. the guy eventually gave up i think. took me a few weeks before i felt comfortable just having a normal sounding contact. dont sweat it, everyone sounds awkward at first and the regulars on repeaters have heard it all a hundred times

welcome to the hobby. the baofeng thing is fine for getting started on repeaters but if you get the itch for HF its a whole different world. whats your setup looking like going forward, you thinking about upgrading the license