ok so i finally got my technician license last month and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater but nobody seems to hear me when i key up. did some digging and apparently i need a CTCSS tone programmed in but honestly the whole thing is a bit confusing to me still.

the repeater directory listing says the tone is 100.0 Hz and i thought i had that set in my radio (baofeng uv-5r, i know i know) but still nothing. like i can hear other people on there just fine having conversations, i can even hear the repeater ID when it times out, but when i transmit nobody responds and i dont hear any kind of courtesy tone after i drop.

is it possible i have the tone set to transmit on the wrong frequency or something? im programming it through chirp if that helps. also sort of wondering if theres like... a proper way to break into a conversation or if i should just wait. dont want to step on anyone unintentionally

Hey, welcome to the hobby. The CTCSS thing trips up a lot of new folks so dont sweat it. In CHIRP there are actually two tone fields to pay attention to — one for what you transmit TO the repeater (the tone squelch column, sometimes labeled Tone or CTCSS) and one for what the repeater sends back to you. You only need to worry about setting the transmit tone to 100.0 Hz for most situations, the receive side you can usually leave blank or set to none unless you specifically want your radio to stay quiet until it hears a tone back.

Also double check your offset is right — most 2m repeaters use a 600 kHz offset and it matters which direction. If the repeater is on 146.940 for example your transmit freq should be 146.340. If you have that backwards youre transmitting nowhere useful. Once you get that sorted and you key up you should hear the courtesy beep after you release PTT if the repeater picked you up.

As for breaking in — if theres an ongoing QSO just wait for a pause between transmissions and say your callsign. Just the callsign, nothing else, and let them invite you in. Most people are pretty welcoming.

yeah the offset thing got me too when i first started, i had mine set the wrong direction for like two weeks and couldnt figure out why i kept hearing myself on simplex basically lol. chirp can be a little weird about how it displays all that stuff. once you get it sorted though repeaters are really fun, theres a linked system near me that connects like four or five machines across the whole county and you can talk to people pretty far out