so i just got my technician license about three weeks ago and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater but nobody seems to hear me. i can hear other people talking just fine but when i transmit nobody responds. did some googling and i think it might be something to do with a CTCSS tone? my radio is a baofeng uv-5r and i honestly have no idea what tone to use or even how to set it up. the repeater directory listed it as having a 100hz tone but i dont know where to go from there in the menu. also is there like a standard way to call out when you first get on a repeater or do you just start talking? i dont want to be rude or interrupt someone mid conversation without knowing it

welcome to the hobby, dont worry this trips up pretty much everyone at first. the CTCSS tone (sometimes called PL tone) is basically a sub-audible signal your radio sends along with your voice that tells the repeater to open up and retransmit you. without it the repeater just ignores your signal even though you can hear it fine on the output. on the uv-5r you want to go into the menu and look for T-CTCS, that sets your transmit tone. set it to 100.0 and you should be good to go for that repeater. the R-CTCS setting is for receive side squelch which most people leave off unless you need it for a specific reason.

as for getting on the air, the usual thing is to just say your callsign when there's a pause between conversations. like literally just key up and say your call and then let go. people will recognize you're there and someone will usually come back to you. if there's a conversation going on just wait for a break, they usually leave a pause between transmissions for that reason. jumping in mid sentence is the main thing that annoys people so just be patient and you'll be fine

yeah what he said about the tone. also just wanted to add that some repeaters are linked to other repeaters through systems like IRLP or Echolink or AllStar so sometimes when you key up you might be going out to like 50 other repeaters at once which sounds intimidating but honestly its the same deal. just identify yourself and be normal about it. the linked systems usually have a little beep or a different courtesy tone to let you know theyre connected somewhere. our local linked system makes this kind of double beep after each transmission which confused me for the longest time before someone explained it