so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (general class) and im still trying to figure out the whole repeater thing in my area. i programmed in a few of the local machines from repeaterbook and some of them i can hear traffic on just fine but when i try to key up nobody seems to hear me or i just get the courtesy beep and then silence.

my buddy told me i probably have the wrong CTCSS tone set or maybe dont have one set at all. i thought i understood this but apparently not lol. from what i can tell the tone is kind of like a subaudible signal your radio sends along with your voice so the repeater knows youre a legit user and not just random noise right? but im confused because some repeaters on the list dont have a tone listed and others have like 88.5 or 100.0 and i just cant figure out if i need to set both the transmit AND receive tone or just the transmit one.

also while im at it — is there some kind of ettiquette i should know about before jumping on a busy repeater? i dont want to be that guy who steps on someone mid conversation. around here there seems to be a net on tuesday nights and i usually just listen but i wasnt sure if its okay for a newer ham to just check in or if thats more for the established guys.

yeah your buddy is right about the tone thing. for most repeaters you only need to set the transmit CTCSS — thats the tone your radio sends out so the repeater opens up for you. the receive tone (sometimes called DCS or just squelch tone on some radios) is optional and just means your radio will only unsquelch when IT hears that tone coming back from the repeater. most people leave that turned off or set it to carrier squelch so they can hear everything on the output.

so basically just make sure youre putting the tone on the TX side and youre good. if repeaterbook shows 100.0 for a machine, set your transmit tone to 100.0 and leave receive tone off unless you really want it for noise reasons.

and absolutely check into the net — thats literally what they're there for. most net controls love having new checkins, just wait for the net control to ask for checkins, listen to how others do it, and when its your turn just say your callsign phonetically and say youre a new ham if you want. nobody is going to bite you i promise. the tuesday night guys around here are pretty friendly from what ive seen on similar setups.

oh man i had the exact same problem when i first got my radio, spent like two weeks thinking my HT was broken because i could hear the repeater fine but it was like i was invisible. turns out i had encode turned off completely. once i figured out where that setting was buried in the menu it was fine.

one thing i'll add — some linked repeater systems are a little tricky because when your signal gets relayed across the link there can be a slight delay before you actually hear yourself come back through. so sometimes i thought nobody heard me but they actually did, i was just being impatient and keying up again. the linked machines that go through Echolink or IRLP or whatever sometimes have like a half second or full second delay before you hear the tail. just something to keep in mind if you start noticing weirdness on certain machines.