so i passed my technician exam on the 14th and my callsign showed up in the ULS like 4 days later which i wasnt expecting that fast honestly. anyway i borrowed a baofeng from a guy at work who used to be into this stuff and managed to get into a local repeater yesterday morning. the net control was super patient with me, i fumbled the phonetics pretty bad but he came back and confirmed my call so i guess it counted lol. i dont really know what im doing yet but it felt pretty cool. anyone else remember their first qso? did you feel like a complete idiot too

haha yeah my first time on a repeater i forgot to say my callsign at the end of the transmission and the net control had to remind me. twice. dont sweat it everyone starts the same way, you get the rhythm after a few sessions. the phonetics click eventually, just takes some reps. welcome to the hobby

congrats on the ticket. i remember my first qso was on 2m simplex with a neighbor two streets over, nothing fancy but i was absolutely buzzing for like an hour after. the baofeng is fine for getting started but once you get a feel for what you actually want to do you might want to look at something a bit more solid. anyway welcome aboard, what repeater were you on if you dont mind me asking