ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (general) and i finally got a cheap baofeng to play around with while i save up for something better. theres a 2 meter repeater about 12 miles from me that i found on repeaterbook and it lists a tone of 100.0 Hz. i programmed it in but when i key up nobody can hear me, or at least nobody responds. i can hear other people on it just fine though.

my question is — is the 100.0 tone the one i transmit, or is that what the repeater sends back to me? i honestly cant tell from the listing which direction that tone goes. ive tried both settings in chirp (encode only vs encode and decode) and still nothing. or maybe nobody is just around and im overthinking this. also is there like a standard thing you say when you first get on a repeater? i dont want to sound like an idiot

hey welcome to the hobby, dont stress about it. the tone you see listed is almost always the one you need to transmit — that's what the repeater uses to open its squelch and let your signal through. so encode only is usually the right setting for most situations. the decode side is just for your radio to filter out other signals on your end, a lot of people dont bother with it.

as for nobody responding, honestly thats pretty normal on a lot of repeaters these days. a lot of them just sit quiet for hours. best thing to do is just say your callsign and something like 'listening' or 'monitoring' after you key up. just that simple. if someone's around they'll come back to you. some repeaters also have a courtesy tone — a little beep after someone transmits — so listen for that after you key up, it usually means the repeater at least heard you.

yeah what he said about the tone direction is right. and honestly repeaterbook listings can be kinda inconsistent sometimes, ive seen ones where the info is just wrong or outdated. if you can hear the courtesy tone after you key up then the repeater is definitely receiving you, thats the main thing to check. also some repeaters have a timeout timer so if you key up for more than like a minute or two it'll cut you off, just something to be aware of when youre testing things out