okay so i got my technician license about three weeks ago and i've been trying to use the 147.315 repeater that's listed on repeaterbook for my area. i can hear people talking on it just fine but whenever i key up nobody responds and i dont think i'm actually getting into the machine.

my radio is a baofeng uv-5r and i programmed it with the offset and everything but i'm wondering if i'm missing something with the tone stuff. the listing shows a CTCSS of 100.0 hz and i think i have it set but honestly the menu system on that radio is confusing as heck and i might have it set to tone squelch instead of tone transmit or whatever the difference is.

also is there like... a proper way to call out on a repeater? i said my callsign a couple times but it felt weird just talking into the air. do people usually just say their call and wait, or is there some other thing i'm supposed to do?

the CTCSS thing is almost certainly your issue. on the uv-5r you want to make sure the T-CTCS is set to 100.0 hz - that's the transmit tone, which is what the repeater needs to hear from you before it'll open up. the R-CTCS is receive tone squelch, meaning your radio won't open its speaker unless it hears that tone coming back at you, which is a separate thing entirely and not required for getting into the machine.

a lot of new folks accidentally set the receive side and wonder why they can hear people fine but cant get in. easy mistake with those radios. there's a decent video on youtube that walks through baofeng programming specifically for repeaters, might be worth a look.

as for calling out - yeah just saying your callsign and maybe "listening" or "monitoring" is totally fine. something like "W1XYZ listening" and then just wait a few seconds. if the repeater has a courtesy tone you'll usually hear it after someone unkeys, that little beep means the machine is working and the squelch tail dropped. if you key up and hear that beep after you release, you're probably getting in. good luck, hope you get it sorted out.

yeah what they said about the tone is right. i went through the exact same thing when i first got my license lol. also just a heads up - some repeaters around here are linked into systems like IRLP or EchoLink or even connected to a whole regional network, so sometimes when you first start transmitting you might catch people mid-conversation from like three states away and feel like you interrupted something. dont stress about it too much, just id yourself and people are usually pretty chill. the ham community on repeaters is way more welcoming than i expected honestly.