okay so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i finally got my first HT, a Baofeng UV-5R, and i've been trying to get on the local 2m repeater that's listed in the repeater directory. the offset is listed as -600 and there's a tone listed as 100.0 Hz. i programmed it in but when i key up nobody seems to hear me, or at least i never get any response. i did hear a couple guys talking on there yesterday so i know its active.

my question is does that 100.0 Hz tone go in as the transmit tone or do i need it on receive too? i just set up the CTCSS on transmit and left receive squelch as carrier. i dunno if thats right or if im doing something else completely wrong. also is there like a standard way to call CQ on a repeater or do you just say your callsign and say youre monitoring? i dont want to step on anyone or be rude about it.

you've actually got it right — the tone goes on transmit side, that's what opens the repeater's squelch so it will rebroadcast your signal. the receive tone (sometimes called DCS or CTCSS decode) is optional on your end and really just filters out other traffic you dont want to hear, most people leave it off or set it to carrier squelch like you did.

so the tone setup sounds fine. could be a few things going on — baofengs can be a little quirky with their offset programming, worth double checking that the output frequency and the shift direction are both correct. also those HTs don't have great power or antenna gain so depending on how far you are from the repeater and what's in the way, 5 watts might not be making it. try going outside if you've been indoors.

as for calling on a repeater, yeah just key up and say your callsign and say youre listening or monitoring, something like "W1XYZ monitoring" is totally fine. if you want to see if anyone will chat just say youre looking for a contact. most people on repeaters are pretty welcoming to new hams, dont sweat it too much.

yeah what he said about the tone is right. one other thing that tripped me up when i was starting out — make sure the repeater offset is going in the right direction. on 2 meters a negative offset means your transmit frequency is 600 kHz BELOW the listed frequency, so if the repeater output is say 146.940 you should be transmitting on 146.340. the radio should handle that automatically if you set the shift to minus but on a baofeng sometimes people accidentally enter both frequencies manually and get it backwards.

also honestly just listening for a while before jumping in is good repeater etiquette anyway, you'll get a feel for how the locals operate on that machine.