ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (general) and i finally got a decent HT, a Baofeng UV-5R that my elmer helped me program. theres a couple of repeaters in my area that i can hear pretty well but when i try to transmit nobody responds and sometimes it doesnt even seem like the repeater opens up at all.

i looked up the repeater info on repeaterbook and it shows a CTCSS tone of 100.0 for the input. i think i have it set but honestly the menu system on this radio is a pain and i might have set the wrong thing. like is there a difference between setting the tone for transmit vs receive? because i think i set it for both but maybe i shouldnt have done that. also one of the local guys told me i need to do a courtesy ID or something before just jumping in, is that a thing everywhere or just some repeaters?

sorry if this is a dumb question, just trying to figure out what im messing up here

Not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of new hams with those radios. So the Baofeng has separate settings for TX tone and RX tone. For hitting a repeater you pretty much only need the TX CTCSS set to 100.0 — that's what tells the repeater to open up when you key. The RX tone is different, that would filter what YOU hear on your end, so if you have it set you might actually be blocking signals you want to receive. Try turning the RX tone off (set to none or off depending on the menu) and leave only the TX tone on at 100.0.

As for the courtesy tone thing, yeah that's pretty common etiquette on a lot of linked repeaters especially. The idea is you just pause for a second after someone finishes talking so the repeater can drop and give a courtesy beep, that way people know the frequency is clear before someone else jumps in. On some machines if you step on that it can cause all kinds of weirdness especially if the repeater is linked to others. Worth asking your elmer or whoever the trustee is what the local customs are because it really does vary.

yeah the baofeng menu for CTCSS is honestly terrible, i spent like an hour on mine before i figured it out. theres a youtube video specifically for the UV-5R CHIRP programming that might be easier — just program it through the computer and it takes a lot of the guesswork out. way less frustrating than fighting the keypad menus

also dont get discouraged if the repeater is quiet even when its working, some of the local machines around here can go hours with nothing on them and its totally normal