ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (technician) and i finally got my baofeng programmed with a few local repeaters from repeaterbook. most of them work fine but theres one i keep trying to hit and i just cant get it to open up. i can hear other people talking on it just fine but when i key up nobody responds and i dont think im actually getting into the repeater at all.

i checked repeaterbook again and it shows a CTCSS tone of 100.0 Hz for the input. i have the tone set in my radio but im not sure if im setting it right — like do i need tone encode only, or encode AND decode? ive seen settings for like tone squelch vs just tone and its confusing me. also someone at my club mentioned something about a courtesy tone, what does that mean and am i supposed to wait for it before i talk?

also general question — is there like an unwritten rule about how long you should wait before jumping in on a repeater? i dont wanna step on anyone or come across as rude. still figuring all this out.

yeah this is a really common thing to get tripped up on when youre starting out, dont worry about it. so for getting INTO the repeater you only need encode on — that just means your radio is sending the 100.0 Hz tone along with your voice so the repeater knows to open up. decode (or tone squelch) is for YOUR radio's speaker — it means your radio will only open its squelch when it hears that tone coming back from the repeater. some people use it to cut down on noise if theres a lot of interference but its optional on your end.

so check that your radio has encode turned on for that channel and the tone is actually set to 100.0 and not something close like 100.9. baofengs can be a little finicky with how they display the tones in CHIRP.

the courtesy tone thing — basically after someone finishes talking the repeater usually plays a little beep or tone before it resets. you're supposed to wait for that before you key up, gives the system a second to reset and also lets anyone else jump in if they need to. its just good manners really. waiting a second or two after the courtesy tone is plenty.

i had the exact same problem when i first got my uv-5r, turns out i had the tone set on the wrong memory channel because i thought i had it right but chirp had written it to a different row. worth double checking you saved it to the right one. also some repeaters have a timeout timer so if you key up and just say your callsign and nothing else and let go, sometimes it takes a second before you hear anything back — thats normal, the repeater is just doing its thing before it drops.