so i passed my technician exam last thursday and immediately went out and bought a baofeng uv-5r because everyone said thats where you start i guess. spent like two days just figuring out how to program the thing with chirp and finally got it hooked up to a local repeater. my first actual QSO was yesterday and i completely blanked on my callsign halfway through my transmission, like i just... forgot it. the other guy was super patient and we ended up talking for maybe 10 minutes about nothing in particular but it felt amazing. anyway hi everyone im KD9 something something, still memorizing it

haha dont worry about blanking on your call, literally everyone does it at least once. i called CQ on 40m during my first week and when someone came back to me i just sat there in silence for like 4 seconds before my brain caught up. welcome to the hobby, it gets way more natural pretty quick

the baofeng is a solid start honestly, i still have mine even though ive got way nicer radios now. you should look into getting on HF eventually if you upgrade to general, thats where things really open up. but yeah welcome and dont sweat the callsign thing, ive been licensed 6 years and i still sometimes stumble on phonetics when im tired