ok so ive been licensed about 3 months now (tech) and i finally got my first HT, a Baofeng UV-5R, and i've been trying to get into the local 2m repeater. i programmed in the frequency and offset no problem but nobody seems to hear me when i key up. looked it up in the repeater directory and it says the input tone is 100.0 Hz so i put that in but still nothing.

talked to a guy at the club meeting and he said something about making sure the tone is set on transmit not receive but honestly i wasnt sure what he meant and didnt want to seem dumb asking again. is there a difference? and do i need to set a tone to hear the repeater too or just to get through to it? also is there like... a proper way to call on a repeater or do you just start talking? i dont want to step on anyone

hey welcome to the hobby, dont sweat it, we all had these exact questions starting out. so the tone thing — on most repeaters you only need to encode the tone on your transmit, meaning your radio sends that 67Hz or 100Hz or whatever as a subaudible tone along with your voice. the repeater hears it and opens up. you dont usually need to set a decode tone on receive unless the repeater is in a noisy area and they've set it up to send a tone back, which is less common.

on the UV-5R there's a setting called T-CTCS (transmit CTCSS) and R-CTCS (receive CTCSS) — make sure you have 100.0 set under T-CTCS and R-CTCS can stay off or set to whatever. a lot of people get them mixed up in CHIRP too if you programmed it that way.

as for calling on the repeater, just key up, wait about half a second, then say your callsign and something like "listening" or give your location. most folks monitor so someone'll probably come back to you. just dont double key or start talking the instant you key up or the first syllable gets cut off, happens to everyone at first

yeah what the previous guy said about T-CTCS vs R-CTCS is spot on. i spent like two weeks wondering why a repeater wouldnt hear me and it turned out i had the tone set on receive only, felt pretty silly. CHIRP makes it kinda confusing with the column layout.

one other thing on repeater etiquette — around here at least people usually leave a pause between transmissions so the linking system has time to reset, some repeaters are linked to others over the internet (EchoLink, IRLP, stuff like that) and if you step right on the tail you can cause issues. your local club probably has specifics on how their system works. worth asking someone who's on it regularly