ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (technician) and i finally got my first HT, a Baofeng UV-5R, and ive been trying to get into the local 2m repeater scene. theres a couple repeaters listed on repeaterbook for my area and i programmed them in but i can hear traffic just fine, problem is when i try to transmit nobody seems to hear me or at least nobody responds.

i looked it up and i think i need to set a CTCSS tone? the repeaterbook listing shows a tone of 100.0 Hz for the one i usually listen to. i went into the menu and set the T-CTCSS to 100.0 but still nothing. i tried calling CQ a few times and once i just said my callsign and said "listening" but nothing. is there something else im missing or is nobody just around during the day? also is there like rules about how to break into a conversation or ask if the repeater is in use, i feel like im just shouting into the void and i dont want to be rude about it

Hey welcome to the hobby, don't get discouraged. A few things — first, the CTCSS setup on the UV-5R can be a little confusing because there's both a transmit tone (T-CTCSS) and a receive tone (R-CTCSS) setting. For accessing a repeater you only need the transmit one set, which it sounds like you did correctly. So that part should be fine.

One thing to double-check is your offset. 2m repeaters typically use a 600 kHz offset, so if the repeater output is say 146.940 your radio needs to be transmitting on 146.340. If you programmed it manually make sure the offset direction is right too, some repeaters are minus offset, some are plus. RepeaterBook usually tells you which.

As for nobody responding — honestly that's pretty normal depending on the time of day and how active your local repeater is. A lot of them are pretty quiet during work hours. Try evenings or weekend mornings, that's usually when you get more activity. And yeah there is definitely repeater etiquette — most people just wait for a pause and say their callsign, like "W1ABC monitoring" or if a conversation is going on you wait for a gap and just say your call once. Someone will usually come back to you and invite you in. You're not being rude by trying, just don't key up in the middle of someone's sentence and you're golden.

also worth checking if the repeater is even linked to anything or if it goes through a controller that requires a specific access tone — some around here need you to send the tone for like a full second before it opens up. i had the same problem when i first started and it turned out the repeater i was trying to hit was part of an IRLP node and had slightly different access requirements than what repeaterbook showed. the listing wasnt totally up to date. if you can find a local club associated with the repeater thats usually the best way to get the actual current info straight from the trustee