I'm also studying for general. You're fortunate to have someone else to set up all the antennas and rigs you need. I'm getting by first HF rig this week (after 30 years)! I can already see my wife's eyes rolling. I'm still hopeful she'll be interested one day. Maybe after more than half the family is on the air.
Discussion
Yes I do feel very lucky that our shack is already set up and I don’t need to be involved in that. Not too many women out there and I’m definitely still learning the ropes. I can podcast but ham radio mic fright is real
Mic fright is real, but not nearly as bad as public speaking. I think it took me a few months of 'getting to know the guys' to get over that. Just because many can make the Q-code lingo flow out smoother than oil doesn't mean you need to be able to do that. There are many opportunities to have a QSO other than contesting. I've noticed many hams even forget to ID themselves on a repeater while doing a roundtable during the evening commute much less do something like the rapid-fire short-window DX QSL seeking. I'm much more open to talking to someone that keys the repeater with "This is KZ7TXC and I'm not quite how to work this thing" than "A1AA monitoring"
Haha yes that is true! And I have definitely noticed that on our repeaters when it’s just friends chit chatting that it’s not by the book at that point. I need to do some more QSOs and get past the nerves of sounding like I don’t know what I’m doing
Lol. I have learned to just be myself. I've offended people, but like anywhere else I don't worry about it. There's morons on the air just like anywhere else unfortunately.