so i passed my technician exam last tuesday after studying for about three weeks with the hamstudy app and honestly thought id never remember all the electrical formulas but here we are. picked up a baofeng uv-5r just to have something to listen with while i waited for my callsign to show up in the FCC database and then one morning i just... saw it there. KD9 something. i about lost my mind.

anyway keyed up on the local 2m repeater that evening just to say hi and this older guy came back to me immediately and we talked for like 20 minutes about nothing in particular. he told me about the club that meets at the library on thursdays. i dont even know what half the stuff he mentioned was but it felt really cool to actually make a contact after all that studying. first QSO in the log, pretty stoked about that.

anyone else remember their first contact? was it as awkward as mine felt lol

congrats on the ticket man. my first QSO was a disaster, keyed up and completely forgot my callsign for like two seconds of dead air before i remembered it. the guy on the other end was super patient though. that repeater crowd is usually pretty welcoming to new ops. definitely go to that club meeting if you can, thats how i ended up finding my elmer and he basically walked me through getting my general within a few months. also maybe look at getting a better radio eventually, the baofeng will do the job but you'll want something with better audio sooner or later just saying

yeah my first one was on 40m SSB, i was so nervous i gave my callsign wrong and had to correct myself mid-transmission which was embarassing. but honestly nobody cares, everyone started somewhere. welcome to the hobby