okay so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (general class) and im still trying to figure out the whole repeater thing. i live in a medium sized city and theres like 6 or 7 repeaters listed on repeaterbook for my area. some of them i can hear people talking on just fine but when i try to transmit nobody seems to hear me, or at least nobody responds.

so i did some reading and i think the issue is CTCSS tones? like some repeaters require you to transmit a specific subaudible tone before theyll open up. i programmed a couple into my baofeng using chirp and i think i got it right but im not totally sure. one of the repeaters i want to use shows 100.0 hz tone on repeaterbook but theres also a field that says DCS and i dont know which one to use or if they can both be active at the same time.

also kind of a separate question - is there like an unwritten rule about how long you should wait before jumping into a repeater conversation? i dont want to be rude but i also dont know how people signal that theyre done talking vs just pausing to think. someone mentioned the term "kerchunking" and said its bad but i wasnt totally clear on what that means exactly. any help appreciated, still very much learning all this stuff

welcome to the hobby, dont stress too much about this stuff it clicks pretty fast once you get a few QSOs under your belt.

on the CTCSS vs DCS thing - they're two different types of squelch tones and a repeater will only use one or the other, not both at the same time. CTCSS is an analog subaudible tone, DCS is a digital code. if repeaterbook shows 100.0 in the tone field thats almost certainly CTCSS, so just program that in as your transmit tone and you should be good. in chirp you want to make sure the tone mode is set to "Tone" not "TSQL" - TSQL makes your radio also filter incoming signals by tone which you usually dont want on a repeater, you want to hear everyone not just people also transmitting that tone.

kerchunking is when someone just keys up the repeater briefly without saying their callsign, basically to see if it works or if theyre in range. the reason its frowned on is it uses the repeater without identifying, which is technically against part 97 rules. if you wanna test just say your callsign and "testing" real quick, thats totally fine and nobody minds.

as for jumping into a conversation, most repeaters have a pretty short tail (the beep or timeout after someone unkeys) and there's usually like a 2-3 second gap between overs. if you hear that gap and want to join just say your callsign during the pause, most people are happy to bring someone new in

yeah i had the exact same confusion when i started with my first HT. the baofeng chirp programming can be a little misleading with how the tone fields are labeled. one thing i'll add - some repeaters around here are linked into systems like IRLP or EchoLink or even a whole regional network, and those can have their own little culture around when its okay to break in and when people are mid-conversation on a net or whatever. learned that the hard way when i interrupted what turned out to be a weekly directed net, felt pretty embarrassed but the control op was nice about it and just let me know. most people are understanding with new hams