so i passed my technician exam last thursday and just got my callsign in the ULS system two days ago. spent the first day just listening on my baofeng (yeah yeah i know) and finally worked up the nerve to key up on the local 2m repeater yesterday afternoon. the net control was super patient with me, i totally fumbled my callsign the first time i tried to give it phonetically, mixed up november and november... wait no i mean i said november twice instead of going to the next letter lol. anyway the guy on the other end just waited and then came back to me like it was totally normal. talked for maybe 3 minutes about signal reports and weather which i know sounds boring but honestly felt like the coolest thing ive done in a while. already studying for general now because i want to get on HF so bad

haha the phonetic alphabet panic is real, i did the same thing on my first qso. dont sweat the baofeng thing either, we all start somewhere and it works fine for local stuff. once you get your general and get on 40m you're gonna wonder why you waited. welcome to the hobby

congrats man. i remember my first contact, i was shaking a little honestly. the general test isnt too bad if you already did tech, a lot of it overlaps. HF is a whole different world though, first time i heard a station in europe come back to me i just kind of sat there for a second before i remembered i had to actually respond