so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (tech class) and i finally got my baofeng programmed to hit the local 2m repeater, or at least i think i did. sometimes it kerchunks and i hear the tail, other times nothing happens at all. i looked up the repeater on repeaterbook and it shows a PL tone of 100.0 hz but i honestly wasnt sure if that goes in the transmit tone field or the receive tone field on the radio. i just put it in both because i didnt know what else to do.

also i noticed some people just say their call and go silent waiting for someone to respond, and other people launch straight into a full conversation like someone is already listening. is one of those more correct than the other? i dont want to step on anyone or come across as rude. been lurking on the repeater for about two weeks before i tried transmitting and it seems pretty active in the evenings but i wasnt sure about the daytime.

anyway any help would be appreciated, still figuring all this out

the CTCSS thing trips up a lot of new folks, dont worry. so the PL tone (same thing as CTCSS, just older lingo) is what your radio sends out when you transmit so the repeater knows to open up and repeat you. the receive tone is different — that filters what YOU hear so your speaker only opens if someone is transmitting with that tone too. for most repeaters you only need to set the transmit tone. putting it in both fields usually doesnt hurt anything but if the repeater doesnt use CTCSS on its output then setting a receive tone might actually make you miss transmissions from other stations, so i'd just leave the rx side off unless you know for sure the repeater uses it.

as for etiquette, both approaches you described are pretty normal. saying your callsign and waiting is totally fine, some people just say "N0XYZ monitoring" or whatever and wait to see if anyone comes back. launching into a conversation is more for when you already know someone is on. the main thing is just dont kerchunk the repeater without identifying, the FCC wants you to ID and honestly it's just good manners on a linked system especially.

yeah what he said about the tone. i made the same mistake when i started, had a receive tone set and wondered why the repeater sounded dead half the time lol. took me an embarrassingly long time to figure that out.

one thing i'd add — if the repeater is linked to other machines (like an IRLP node or part of a statewide network) just be aware your audio is potentially going a lot further than you think. not a big deal but it kind of changes how i think about what i say on there. some of those linked systems have nodes all over the place and random people in other states might be listening in. kind of cool actually when you think about it