okay so i just got my technician license about three weeks ago and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater that my club runs. i programmed in the frequency and offset no problem but every time i key up nobody hears me and i dont hear anything back from the repeater. i looked it up and i think it has something to do with CTCSS tones? my radio is a baofeng uv-5r and honestly the manual is kind of a mess to follow.

also while im asking — when i do eventually get on there, is there like a protocol or something for how to join a conversation? i dont want to step on someone or do something embarrassing. a guy at my club meeting mentioned something about kerchunking being rude but i wasnt totally sure what he meant by that.

yeah CTCSS is basically a sub-audible tone your radio transmits along with your voice — the repeater won't open up unless it hears the right tone, it's how they filter out interference and random noise. most repeaters list their tone on the repeater directory, like repeaterbook.com is usually pretty accurate. once you find the tone for your local machine just program it into the T-CTCS setting on the baofeng, there's a bunch of youtube videos that walk through programming those radios step by step because yeah the manual really isn't great.

as for etiquette — kerchunking means just keying up to test if you hit the repeater without identifying yourself, which is technically illegal and also just annoying to people already on frequency. if you want to test if you're getting in, just say your callsign and something like "testing" and you'll usually get a response from someone. to join a conversation in progress, wait for a pause between exchanges and just say your callsign, people will usually acknowledge you and bring you in. most repeater users are pretty welcoming to new folks so don't stress too much about it.

oh man i went through the exact same thing when i first got licensed lol. the baofeng programming is kind of a nightmare at first but once you get it it makes sense. one thing that helped me was just using CHIRP software to program the radio from my laptop instead of doing it all by hand on the keypad, way easier to see what youre doing and make sure the tone is actually set right.

and yeah what the other guy said about etiquette is pretty much it. i was nervous to jump in at first too but honestly most people on repeaters are really friendly, especially to new hams. just listen for a while to get a feel for how the conversations flow on that particular machine, some are really busy and some are pretty quiet and the vibe is a little different on each one.