so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (got my technician in february) and i finally got a decent HT, a Baofeng UV-5R that my buddy passed along to me. i can hear people on the local 2m repeater just fine but when i key up nobody responds and i dont think im getting into it. looked up the repeater on repeaterbook and it shows a PL tone of 100.0 Hz so i programmed that in but still nothing.

heres what i dont understand though — i see in the menu there are options for encode only, decode only, or both. right now i have it set to encode AND decode which i thought was right but maybe thats the problem? like if im decoding too then am i filtering out my own transmissions somehow? i honestly cant tell if im even hitting the machine. is there a way to check without bothering everyone on the repeater? and also is it rude to just key up and say something like a radio check when theres no conversation happening? dont want to step on anyone or come across as annoying right out of the gate.

welcome to the hobby, dont stress too much about the etiquette stuff, most repeater users are pretty understanding with new folks. to answer your actual question though — yeah you want encode only for getting into the repeater. the CTCSS tone is just what the repeater needs to hear from YOU to open its squelch and let you in. you dont need to decode it on your end unless you want the repeater's signal to open your radio's squelch too, which is useful if there's a lot of interference on the frequency but honestly most people just leave decode off and let the carrier squelch handle it.

as for checking if youre getting in — totally fine to just say your callsign and ask for a radio check, thats exactly what theyre there for. something like "[callsign] with a radio check" is totally normal. just dont hold the PTT for 10 seconds before you talk, some guys do that and it drives people nuts lol. give it a half second after you key up before speaking.

oh also one thing i noticed when i first started using my UV-5R — make sure youve got the right offset programmed. 2m repeaters usually need a -600 kHz offset but its worth double checking because the baofeng doesnt always auto-set that depending on how you entered the frequency. if your offset is wrong youre transmitting on the wrong frequency entirely and no amount of tone fiddling will help. i made that exact mistake for like two weeks before someone pointed it out to me at a club meeting, pretty embarasing honestly.