so i finally worked up the nerve to check into our local 2m Tuesday night net last week. ive been licensed for about 4 months (general) and mostly just been listening and doing some FT8 but wanted to try actual voice operating. anyway the net control called for check-ins and i just said my callsign and that was it. a couple people after me said their callsign, name, and location so i think maybe i was supposed to do that too? nobody said anything to me about it but i felt a little awkward after. also at one point there was a long pause and i wasnt sure if i should say something or just wait. im definitely overthinking this but i kind of want to know what the actual expected format is before i do it again next week

oh dont worry about it at all, honestly. every net is a little different and you'll pick up the rhythm pretty fast just by listening a few times before jumping in. most nets around here like you to say your call, first name, and city but some just want the call. the net control should really announce the format at the top of the net -- if yours doesnt that's kind of on them not you. the pause thing is totally normal, sometimes net control is writing down calls or waiting to see if anyone else is coming in. just wait it out. you didnt do anything wrong, the fact that you checked in at all puts you ahead of like half the licensed hams in this county who never get on the air

Yeah same thing happened to me when I first started checking into nets. What I do now is just listen to the first two or three check-ins before mine and copy whatever format they're using. Works pretty well. Some nets also have a little preamble at the start where net control explains what they want but not all of them bother. The Tuesday night traffic nets tend to be a bit more formal about it than the just-for-chat ragchew style ones. Either way nobody's going to give you a hard time for keeping it short, honestly a lot of old timers appreciate brevity on a busy net.