okay so ive been licensed for about three months now and i finally got a handheld that can hit the 147.xxx repeater in my area. the club's website says to use a 100hz CTCSS tone to access it but when i program it in i can hear other people just fine but nobody seems to hear me back, or at least nobody responds. tried calling CQ a couple times and just got silence.

then last week i was messing around and forgot to set the tone and keyed up by accident and someone actually came back to me that time which was weird. so now im not sure if i even need the tone or if i had the wrong frequency offset set or what. the repeater is listed as plus offset but my radio might have it backwards, i honestly dont know. its a baofeng so the menus are kind of a nightmare to figure out.

also separate question — is there like a standard way to call on a repeater? i feel like just saying my callsign and saying listening sounds weird but i dont know what the right thing to do is. been listening for a few weeks and people seem to just jump in mid conversation sometimes without introducing themselves which also confuses me.

the tone thing you're describing is actually pretty common to mix up. so CTCSS works like this — the repeater itself has a tone it requires on the INPUT (the frequency you transmit on) before it'll open up and retransmit you. if you're hearing people fine that's because you're listening on the output, and the repeater doesn't need a tone to send audio out to you. but if you had the tone turned off when you keyed up and someone still heard you, one of two things happened — either that particular repeater doesn't actually require a tone to access it (some dont, the website might just be outdated), or the person who responded to you was on a different radio monitoring the input frequency directly.

on the offset thing, if it's a 2 meter repeater and the listed frequency is above 147 MHz, plus offset is correct. if it's below 147 it would normally be minus. your radio might default to the wrong one depending on how you entered it. worth double checking in the baofeng menus under the offset direction setting, it's usually labeled as a + or - option somewhere in there.

as for calling on the repeater — totally normal to just say your callsign and say you're monitoring or listening. some people say "[callsign] for any takers" or just throw their call out after a gap in conversation. no wrong way really as long as you ID properly. don't overthink it, just get on and talk.

yeah baofengs are rough to program by hand honestly. if you haven't already just grab CHIRP, it's free software and you can see all the channel settings laid out in a spreadsheet basically which makes the offset direction and tone stuff way easier to verify at a glance. saved me a ton of headache when i was starting out.

and dont feel bad about the etiquette stuff, i lurked on repeaters for like two months before i ever said anything because i wasn't sure what the "rules" were. most regulars on a friendly repeater are pretty happy when a new call shows up, some of them have been talking to the same four people for years lol.