okay so i just got my tech license about three weeks ago and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater. i can hear people on it fine but when i key up nobody seems to hear me, or at least nobody responds. i looked up the repeater on repeaterbook and it shows a CTCSS tone of 100.0 hz. i programmed that into my baofeng as the transmit tone but im not sure if i also need to set it as the receive tone or if thats something different entirely.

also i noticed on the repeaterbook listing it says the repeater requires the tone to access it but then i saw somewhere that some repeaters use DCS instead? i dont really understand the difference yet. i just want to make sure im not doing something embarrassing before i try calling out again. been sitting here hitting the PTT button and getting nothing back and i cant tell if its my radio, my programming, or just that nobody is monitoring at the time i try.

any help appreciated, this stuff is way more confusing than the license exam made it seem

welcome to the hobby, dont sweat it this trips up basically everyone at first. so the transmit tone is the one that matters for getting into the repeater — thats the subaudible tone your radio sends along with your voice so the repeater knows to open up. the receive tone (sometimes called decode or rx tone) is different, thats just telling your radio to only unmute when it hears that tone coming back at you. for getting onto the repeater you only need the tx tone set correctly.

100.0 hz is a pretty common one so you're probably programmed right. a few things worth checking though — make sure you have the right offset set, on 2m that's usually minus 600 khz but some repeaters are different. and double check you have the correct input frequency programmed, not just the output. if you're hearing the repeater you're on the right output frequency at least so that part sounds good.

honestly your best bet is just to try calling again at different times of day. a lot of repeaters have active nets in the evenings, like maybe check if theres a monday night net or something listed on their website. people are way more likely to respond during a net than random times. good luck, youll get it sorted.

yeah what he said about the offset is important, i forgot about that when i started too and was confused for like a week lol. also just to add — if the repeater has a timeout timer and youre keying up and just sitting there without talking it might be cutting you off before you even finish. some repeaters have pretty short timers like 3 minutes. just something to be aware of, probably not your issue but worth knowing