ok so i just got my technician license about three weeks ago and ive been trying to get on the local 2 meter repeater. i can hear people talking on it just fine but when i key up nobody responds and i dont think im actually getting into the machine. looked up the repeater on repeaterbook and it shows a CTCSS tone of 100.0 hz but im not totally sure where to even program that in my radio. i have a baofeng uv-5r which i know everyone has opinions about but its what i could afford to start with.

anyway i set what i thought was the tone but i tried calling and still nothing. is the tone something the repeater requires to open the squelch or is it more like a courtesy thing? also someone mentioned i might need to set it as encode only and not encode+decode, is that right? i really dont want to be that guy who steps on people mid conversation so ive mostly just been listening but id really love to actually make a contact on there at some rate.

yeah you've got the right idea, the CTCSS tone is what the repeater uses to open its receiver — without it your signal gets in but the repeater just ignores it. so you definitely need to have the tone set to transmit (encode) when you key up. the encode+decode thing you mentioned is actually for your own radio's squelch, meaning your radio will only let audio through to your speaker if it hears that tone back. some people use that to filter out random noise but for just getting into a repeater you only need the encode side turned on.

on the uv-5r it can be a little confusing — you want to make sure you're in the right menu, i think it's the T-CTCS option for transmit tone. set that to 100.0 and leave R-CTCS alone unless you want that decode filter. also double check you have the right offset programmed, 2m repeaters are usually plus or minus 600 khz. if the repeater is on say 146.940 the input is probably 146.340. good luck, repeaters are a great way to get started and most folks on them are happy to work a new ham.

went through this exact same thing like two months ago lol. one thing that also tripped me up was i had the offset going the wrong direction, plus instead of minus or whatever. the baofeng doesnt always set that automatically depending on how you program it. might be worth double checking that too while youre in there messing with the tone settings. once i got both things right it just worked, heard the tail and everything.