so i passed my technician exam like three weeks ago and just been sitting on my HT scared to actually transmit anything. today i finally just went for it on the local 2m repeater and some guy named Bill came back to me right away. we talked for maybe 5 minutes about signal reports and where i was located and i dont even remember half of what i said because i was so nervous lol. my voice was shaking the whole time. anyway it counts right? im KD9 something and i still have to look up my callsign every single time i sign off which is embarrassing but whatever, it was a real contact and im pretty pumped about it even if it was just a short ragchew on a local machine.

haha that nervousness never fully goes away for some people, i still get a little weird before a big pileup and ive been doing this for like 12 years. but yeah it absolutely counts, your first QSO is your first QSO no matter what. Bill on the repeater has probably elmered more new hams than he can count, those local regulars are usually great about working with newcomers. you'll memorize your callsign faster than you think, give it another week or two of actually using it and it'll just come out automatically.

same thing happend to me when i got my ticket last year, couldnt even remeber to say my callsign at the end and the guy on the other end had to ask me again. felt like an idiot but honestly everyone starts somewhere. whats your HT? im still using a cheap baofeng and trying to figure out if its worth upgrading yet