so i finally got my callsign after studying for like 6 weeks and i was so pumped to get on the air. borrowed my uncle's handheld, a baofeng uv-5r he never uses, and just started scanning around the local repeater. found one with activity and just... keyed up and totally blanked on what to say. said my callsign wrong TWICE and then accidentally said "over and out" which i know is not a thing apparently

the guys on there were super nice about it though, one of them an older guy walked me through a proper exchange and we chatted for maybe 10 minutes about how i got into the hobby. felt amazing once i got past the awkward part. anyway just wanted to share, anybody else have a disaster first qso story because i feel like i cant be the only one

ha dont even worry about it, my first qso i forgot to let go of the PTT button so nobody could respond and i just sat there in silence for like 30 seconds wondering why no one was talking back. took me embarrassingly long to figure out what i did wrong. the guys on my local repeater still give me a hard time about it and that was like 3 years ago

welcome to the hobby, sounds like you found a good repeater with patient folks on it which honestly makes all the difference starting out. some repeaters can be a little cliquey so you got lucky there. "over and out" is a classic one, we've all heard worse trust me. once you get comfortable on the local stuff you might want to look into HF when you upgrade your license, that's where things really get interesting. contacts from your own backyard to across the world on a wire antenna, nothing quite like it