so i finally did it, been putting off studying for like 8 months and just sat down last week and hammered through the question pool and passed yesterday with a 90%. still waiting on the callsign to show up in the ULS but im already obsessing over what radio to get first. my buddy who got me into this has a baofeng he let me borrow and i made my first ever transmission on a local repeater this morning, just said my name and that i was a new tech waiting on my callsign, and like four people came back to me which was honestly kind of surreal. one older guy stayed on for like 20 minutes just chatting and telling me about the club. anyway just wanted to introduce myself somewhere, been lurking here for a while reading threads

welcome welcome, that feeling when people actually come back to you the first time is something else right? i remember just kind of freezing up and forgetting everything i was gonna say lol. the club thing is worth looking into if you have time, i resisted it for a while thinking it would be a bunch of old guys talking about antennas but honestly its been really useful and they do all sorts of stuff. what part of the country are you in?

congrats on passing. once your call comes through dont just stick to the repeater, HF is where it gets real interesting. even on tech you can get on 10m and 6m which can be suprisingly active when the bands cooperate. the baofeng will do fine for local stuff but eventually youll want something a bit more solid for the repeater if you plan on doing anything with APRS or linked systems. anyway good luck and dont be shy about jumping in on nets, thats how you actually learn to operate properly