so i finally did it after like 3 months of studying on and off. passed the technician exam yesterday at the local club session and the VE handed me my CSCE and i was shaking a little honestly. got home and stayed up way too late trying to figure out how to program my baofeng uv-5r which i bought like 6 weeks ago thinking i'd pass sooner

anyway got it talking to the local repeater this morning, 146.940 with a 100hz tone, and just sat there listening for like an hour. finally keyed up during a roundtable and said my callsign and that i was a new ham and this older guy named Bob came back to me immediately and we talked for maybe 10 minutes about how i got into the hobby. he was super patient when i fumbled with the PTT button twice. that was my first QSO ever and it was way less scary than i thought it would be. already thinking about HF but thats a whole other thing i guess

congrats man, that first QSO feeling is something else. i remember mine, completely blanked on my callsign for like 2 seconds which felt like forever on air. the baofeng will get you going but yeah once you catch the HF bug youre kind of done for, fair warning. study for general when you get a chance, its not that much harder than tech and opens up so much more

welcome to the hobby. dont worry too much about fumbling stuff at first, everyone does it and the regulars on most repeaters are pretty used to new people coming on. Bob sounds like a good elmer type. my first contact i forgot to say over and just went silent for like 15 seconds lmao