okay so i just got my technician license last month and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater but nobody ever seems to hear me. i can hear other people talking just fine, crystal clear, but when i key up and say my callsign nobody responds. at first i thought maybe the repeater was just busy or something but this has been going on for like two weeks now.

someone at the club meeting mentioned CTCSS tones and i think thats my problem but im not totally sure how they work or how to program them into my radio. i have a baofeng uv-5r (i know i know, everyone says get a better radio but its what i could afford to start). the repeater directory shows a tone of 100.0 hz but i dont really know where to go from there in the menu system. also is there some kind of protocol for getting on a repeater for the first time, like do you just start talking or is there something you're supposed to say first?

welcome to the hobby, youll get this sorted out pretty quick. so the CTCSS tone thing -- basically the repeater has a squelch on it that only opens when it hears that specific subaudible tone along with your signal, otherwise it just ignores you. thats why you hear everyone else fine (the repeater is transmitting to you without needing a tone from you) but your transmissions arent being picked up by it.

on the uv-5r you want to go into the menu and look for something like T-CTCS, thats the transmit tone setting. scroll through until you find 100.0 and save it to that channel. there might also be an R-CTCS setting for receive but you usually dont need that set unless you want your radio to only open its own squelch when it hears the tone back -- most people leave that off. as for etiquette, just key up, wait about half a second after you key (the radio needs a moment to get the tone going and get into the repeater), then say your callsign and that youre listening or monitoring. something like "this is [callsign] listening" works fine. dont worry too much, people on most repeaters are pretty welcoming to new folks.

yeah i went through the exact same thing when i first started, felt like i was invisible on the air for weeks lol. one thing i'll add that tripped me up -- on the baofeng make sure youre actually saving the settings to the right memory channel, i kept editing the wrong one and wondered why nothing stuck. also some repeaters have a timeout timer so if nobody responds right away just try again a little later, sometimes the repeater is linked to other systems and theres a lot of traffic you might not even realize is happening. dont get discouraged, once you get the tone programmed in youll probably start hearing yourself hit the repeater no problem.