Just got my Technician license last month and picked up a BaoFeng UV-5R. I'm having trouble getting into the local repeater on 146.940 MHz - I know the input tone is 123.0 Hz, but I keep getting the dreaded silence when I key up. The repeater directory shows it as 123.0 CTCSS required, but I'm not sure if I'm programming it right. Even though your radio may be transmitting and receiving on the correct frequencies for a particular repeater, you won't be able to access the repeater if you're not also transmitting the CTCSS tone the repeater has been programmed to respond to.

Can someone walk me through the UV-5R setup? Also, should I be hearing the tone on the repeater output, or is that filtered out? Thanks for any help - 73!

Welcome to the hobby! The tone gets filtered out on most repeaters, so you won't hear it on the output. Normally the receive tone is filtered out and the transmitter re-generates the tone. Double-check you're programming TX tone, not RX - that's the common mistake.

Had the same issue with my UV-5R! Make sure you're setting T-CTC (transmit tone) to 123.0, not R-CTC. The menu system is confusing at first. Refer to your radio's user manual for instructions on how to do this. Once you get it right, you'll hear the courtesy beep when you unkey.

Also verify your offset is correct - 146.940 should have a -600 kHz offset, so your transmit frequency is 146.340. On the 2-meter band, the common offset is 600 kHz. Get both the tone and offset right and you'll be golden.