okay so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (tech) and i finally got my baofeng programmed for the local 147.xxx repeater. i can hear other people on it just fine but when i try to transmit nobody seems to hear me or at least nobody responds. a guy at the club meeting mentioned something about a CTCSS tone but im honestly not totally sure what that means or how to check if mine is set right.

i looked it up a little and it sounds like its like a subaudible tone you send along with your transmission so the repeater knows to open up? is that right? and if so how do i even know what tone to use — is it listed somewhere or do i have to ask someone. the repeater is listed on repeaterbook but i wasnt sure if the info there is always current. also is there such a thing as a repeater that doesnt need a tone at all because i thought i heard someone say that once

sorry if this is a dumb question, still figuring all this out

not a dumb question at all, everyone goes through this. yeah you basically have it right — CTCSS is a continuous tone that rides below the audio you can hear, and most repeaters are set up to require it so they dont open up for random noise or interference. without the right tone your signal hits the repeater but the repeater just ignores it, which is exactly what youre describing.

repeaterbook is usually pretty reliable for tone info but it can be out of date sometimes, especially for smaller club repeaters. best thing honestly is to just shoot an email to whoever is listed as the trustee or check the clubs website if they have one. most club sites list the repeater info and the required tone right there.

and yes there are open repeaters that dont require a tone — they run carrier squelch instead of tone squelch, meaning any signal opens them. those are getting less common though because they tend to get tripped by interference a lot. once you get the tone sorted youll probably be good to go, baofengs are a little fiddly to program but once its in there it works fine

oh man i had this exact same problem when i started lol. spent like two weeks wondering why nobody ever came back to me. turned out the tone in repeaterbook was wrong and the repeater had been changed a while back but nobody updated the listing. for me the fix was just showing up to a club net and asking on the air what the current tone was — felt kinda awkward since i wasnt even sure if anyone could hear me but someone came back and helped me out

also make sure you have the offset right too, not just the tone. i forgot about that for a while and was transmitting on the wrong frequency entirely which definitely didnt help