okay so i just got my technician license like three weeks ago and ive been trying to use the local 2m repeater listed in the repeater directory. the frequency and offset are right i think, i can hear other people talking on it just fine, but when i key up nobody seems to hear me. my radio is a baofeng uv-5r and i programmed it myself from scratch.

someone at the club mentioned something about CTCSS tones and i looked it up but im still a little fuzzy on how it all works. the directory listing shows a tone of 100.0 Hz for the repeater but i dont know if thats what i transmit or what i have to receive, or both? i set the radio to transmit that tone but still nothing. also someone mentioned something about a linking system and that the repeater connects to other repeaters somewhere but i have no idea what that means practically speaking for me trying to just say hello on the thing.

sorry if this is a dumb question, just trying to figure out if its my radio or if im missing something about how these work

not a dumb question at all, this trips up pretty much everyone starting out. so the CTCSS tone in the directory is almost always the tone you need to transmit to open the repeater's squelch — think of it like a key that tells the repeater "hey this is a legit signal, let me through." you don't necessarily need to set a receive tone on your end, most people leave receive tone off so they can hear anything coming through the repeater without filtering. double check in the baofeng menu that your TX tone is actually saved to that channel and not just set in the general settings, because those radios can be a little weird about that — channel memory sometimes overrides what you think you set.

as for the linking stuff, some repeaters are connected to systems like IRLP or EchoLink or Allstar which basically tie repeaters together over the internet so you can talk to people in other cities or even countries. practically speaking for you right now it just means when you key up you might hear a little beep or a courtesy tone before you talk, and there might be a short tail after you release the PTT before you hear the repeater drop. just wait for it before you start talking or you'll get cut off. good luck, you'll get it sorted

yeah what he said about the baofeng is spot on, those things save settings in weird ways. i spent like an hour once wondering why my tone wasnt working and it turned out i had it set in the VFO but my channel memory had no tone saved at all. re-program the whole channel from scratch and make sure the T-CTCS is set to 100.0 when you save it.

one more thing on repeater etiquette since you mentioned just wanting to say hello — when you want to join or call someone up, just key up briefly and say your callsign and that you're monitoring, something like "[callsign] listening" and then let go. dont just start talking, give people a chance to come back to you. and if theres already a conversation going, wait for a break and throw your callsign in during the pause between transmissions. people are generally pretty welcoming especially to new hams so dont stress it too much