ok so i just got my technician license a few weeks ago and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater but nobody ever seems to hear me. i can hear other people talking just fine, comes in loud and clear on my baofeng. but when i key up and try to say something nobody responds and sometimes it sounds like my transmission just cuts the audio for a second and then goes back to the ongoing conversation.

i looked up the repeater on the directory and it says it requires a 100.0 Hz tone. i went into the baofeng menus and i think i set it but honestly those menus are confusing and i might have set the wrong thing. is there a difference between CTCSS encode and decode? i think i only turned on the decode part maybe? also im not sure if my offset is correct, the repeater is listed as plus offset and i set it to plus but i dunno, feels like something is still off.

also kind of a separate thing — when i did get through once (i think) i just said my callsign and asked if the repeater was in use and someone kind of curtly told me to wait for a break in the conversation. was that rude of them or did i do something wrong? still trying to figure out repeater etiquette honestly

yeah the encode vs decode thing trips up a lot of new folks, you definitely want encode turned on — that's what sends the tone to the repeater so it actually opens the squelch and lets your signal through. decode just filters what you hear on your end so you only hear stations that are also sending that tone. for day to day repeater use you really only need encode, decode is more useful if you're scanning and dont want to hear every random blip.

on the baofeng it's usually under the T-CTCS menu for transmit (encode) and R-CTCS for receive (decode). make sure T-CTCS is set to 100.0 and you should be good. and double check your offset is right too, most 2m repeaters around here use 600 kHz offset so if the output is say 146.940 your radio should be transmitting on 146.340 automatically when you set it to plus offset. the radio handles the math you just have to tell it which direction.

as for the etiquette thing, yeah you should wait for a pause between transmissions before jumping in, repeater conversations kind of have a rhythm to them. when there's a gap you just say your callsign and that usually signals you want to join or have a call. the guy probably wasn't trying to be mean, some folks just get a little short when they're mid conversation. you'll get used to it.

so anyway i went through almost the exact same thing when i first got on the air, the baofeng menus are genuinely terrible and i spent like two evenings figuring out why nobody could hear me. turned out i had the offset going the wrong direction lol. once i fixed that and got the tone set right it was fine.

one thing i'd add is that some repeaters are also linked to other systems, like echolink or IRLP or sometimes a whole network of repeaters that are all connected together. if your local one is linked then when you transmit you're potentially going out to a bunch of other repeaters at once which is kind of cool but also means you want to be a little thoughtful about tying up the system. usually there's a courtesy tone or a short beep after someone finishes talking, wait for that before you key up.