so i finally passed my technician exam after studying for about 3 weeks and i was so pumped to get on the air. borrowed my dad's old baofeng that he never used and programmed in the local repeater frequency i found on repeaterbook. pushed the button and just said my callsign and asked if anyone was monitoring and there was this long pause and then like 4 people came back at once and i had no idea what to do so i just kind of froze and said uh thanks and let go of the PTT. i could hear them laughing a little i think. anyway one of the guys was super nice and walked me through a proper exchange and we had like a 10 minute qso which was really cool. still embarrassed about the freeze up though. anyone else have a rough first contact or is it just me

oh man that is basically everyones first qso honestly. mine i forgot to say over and just kept talking and the other guy had no idea i was done so we both sat in silence for like 20 seconds before i figured out what happened. you'll laugh about it in a month trust me. the guys on local repeaters are usually pretty forgiving with new hams, most of them remember being in the same spot

haha i did almost the exact same thing. got my ticket in february and the first time i keyed up on the 147 repeater near me i completely blanked on my own callsign. had to look at the paper i printed out. it gets easier real fast tho, after like a week of doing it every day it just becomes automatic