so i passed my technician exam last thursday and i honestly wasnt expecting it to go that smoothly. been studying on and off for like two months using hamstudyapp and just kind of went for it. got my callsign in the ULS a few days later and immediately grabbed a baofeng uv-5r that my brother had sitting in a drawer which i know everyone has opinions about but it works for now

made my first contact on the local 2m repeater the same night i got my callsign, just a quick check in to the tuesday night net and the net control guy was super welcoming, gave me a proper 59 and everything. felt kinda surreal honestly. anyway just wanted to say hi to the forum, been lurking here for a while reading threads. planning to upgrade to general soon so i can get on HF

welcome to the hobby, congrats on passing. tuesday nets are a great way to start, most net controls are pretty patient with new folks. dont stress about the baofeng thing, everyone starts somewhere and for learning the ropes on a local repeater its totally fine. when you do get to HF things get way more interesting, 40m is probably where youll want to start, lots of activity and propagation is usually decent in the evenings. good luck on the general exam

dude same thing happened to me like 6 months ago, the first QSO feeling is weird right, like you built it up so much and then its over in 30 seconds and youre just standing there holding the HT. it gets easier and way more fun once you find a few regulars on the repeater. i ended up just hanging out on 146.520 simplex sometimes too which is hit or miss but sometimes you catch people