so i passed my technician exam last tuesday after putting it off for like three years. studied for maybe two weeks using hamstudyorg and honestly the test wasnt as bad as i thought it would be. anyway my friend lent me his old baofeng uv-5r to get started and i managed to make my first contact on the local repeater the next day. the guy on the other end was super patient with me fumbling through the nato phonetics and gave me a 59 signal report which i think was just being nice but still felt amazing.

now im already looking at hf rigs and wondering if i should just skip ahead and study for general. anyone else go down this rabbit hole immediately or is it just me lol

congrats on the ticket. yeah the rabbit hole is real, i think most of us had that exact same first week. went from baofeng to looking at icom 7300s within like 48 hours of passing. just a warning though, dont rush general just to rush it, actually learn the material because propagation and antenna theory stuff actually matters when youre doing hf. that said, do go for general, hf is a whole different world and your first dx contact will absolutely wreck you in the best way possible.

haha same exact story here, passed mine back in march and within two weeks i had a used ft-857d sitting on my desk. the 2m repeater stuff is fun but once you hear a station in japan or wherever coming through on 20m its kinda hard to go back lol. welcome to the hobby, your wallet will never be the same