so i just passed my technician exam about three weeks ago and got my callsign last week, been doing a lot of listening but havent actually checked into anything yet. i know theres nets out there but im not really sure how to find them or what the procedure is when you actually do check in. like do you just say your callsign or is there more to it than that? i have a baofeng hooked up to a small yagi i built for 2m and can hit a couple repeaters in my area pretty well. any advice would be great, feeling a bit nervous about keying up for the first time honestly

oh man i remember that exact feeling, just kind of hovering over the PTT button for like ten minutes the first time lol. okay so the easiest way to find nets near you is the ARRL net directory, its at arrl.org and you can search by band and location. also repeaterbook sometimes has nets listed in the repeater info for local machines so worth checking that too.

as for checking in, most nets the net control will say something like "is there anyone else who would like to check in" and you just wait for a pause and then give your callsign phonetically. some nets are more casual and some are pretty structured, the traffic nets especially follow a specific format but your local 2m club nets are usually pretty relaxed. just listen to a whole net first before you try checking in and you'll get the feel for it real quick. honestly net controls love when new hams check in, dont sweat it

yeah what he said, also look up the echolink nets if your local repeaters have echolink enabled because theres a ton of activity there especially on weekends. i checked into my first net totally botched my callsign phonetics and nobody cared, the net control just asked me to repeat and that was it. you'll be fine