so ive been licensed for about three months now and i finally feel comfortable enough to try getting on some of the local FM repeaters but im running into something i dont fully understand. i programmed in the frequency and offset for the repeater listed in the repeaterbook app and i can hear people just fine, but when i key up nobody seems to hear me. or at least nobody responds.

i looked it up and i think it might be a CTCSS tone issue? the listing shows 100.0 Hz as the tone but i wasnt sure if i need to encode that, decode it, or both. my radio is a baofeng uv-5r and i honestly have no idea what i set it in the menu, there are so many options and the manual is terrible. is there like a standard way most repeaters work with these tones? or could there be another reason nobody is responding — like maybe im just not making it into the machine

yeah the CTCSS thing trips up a lot of new folks, dont worry about it. basically for most repeaters you just need to set the encode tone — meaning your radio transmits that 100.0 Hz subaudible tone along with your voice, and the repeater's receiver is set to only open up when it hears that specific tone. that way random noise or distant stations on the same frequency dont accidentally key the machine up.

on the uv-5r you want to go into the menu and find the T-CTCS option, that's the transmit one, and set it to 100.0. the R-CTCS is for your radio to filter what it receives and most people just leave that off unless the repeater output is really busy and you dont want to hear random traffic. once you set the encode tone try keying up and giving your callsign, something like just "[callsign] testing" and see if you get the repeater's tail or a courtesy beep back. if you do you're making it in. and honestly if nobody responds right away it might just be a quiet time on that repeater — some of them barely get used during the week.

oh man i went through the exact same thing when i first got my uv-5r, that menu is a nightmare. one thing that also got me was i had the wrong offset direction programmed — some repeaters are plus offset and some are minus and if you get that backwards you're transmitting on the wrong frequency entirely and the repeater never hears you at all. worth double checking that too while you're in there fixing the tone situation.