So a few days ago in was driving to work early (for me 7:00 pm is early.) Now that I’m a little more confident that my HT repeater settings are correct, I turned on my handheld to see what was going on even though I’ve only once before ever heard any random activity on the air…
All if a sudden, I hear a callsign in a moderately thick Spanish accent calling for a radio check. I responded, and next thing you know I’m talking to a guy in Syracuse (a few miles away) over the linked repeater network.
A small feat, and nothing I haven’t done a thousand times in the past on a professional level, but one more step in the Ham direction.