so i passed my technician exam about three weeks ago and ive been sitting on my baofeng just listening to the local repeater for like two weeks straight, too nervous to actually key up. finally yesterday morning there was a net going on and i just... did it. said my callsign and the net control came back to me and i about fell out of my chair.

it was just a check-in, nothing fancy, but man i dont think ive been that nervous about anything in years. hands were literally shaking. anyway just wanted to post somewhere because my family thinks ham radio is weird and doesnt really get why im excited about this lol

haha that first key-up feeling is something else, everybody remembers it. i was parked in my driveway for like 20 minutes before i finally transmitted on a local repeater. welcome to the hobby, it only gets more fun from here. once you get comfortable on the repeater start looking into HF if you can, whole different world.

congrats man, the shaky hands thing is totally real. i did my first contact on a simplex frequency by accident because i had the wrong offset programmed and the guy who answered me was super cool about it and we ended up talking for like 45 minutes. got my general last month and already have like 30 countries in the log which still blows my mind honestly