okay so i just got my technician license about three weeks ago and ive been trying to get on the local 2 meter repeater but nobody ever seems to hear me. the repeater itself is working fine because i can hear other people on it just fine, they come through loud and clear on my baofeng.

i looked up the repeater on repeaterbook and it says the input tone is 100.0 Hz but im not totally sure if ive programmed that right. like i set the CTCSS transmit tone to 100.0 on my radio but when i key up and say my callsign i just get... nothing. no kerchunk, no tail, nobody responds. its like i dont exist.

also i noticed sometimes when i do hear the repeater open up theres like a short beep at the end of transmissions, is that normal? i read somewhere thats a courtesy tone but im not sure what its for exactly. is there something im doing with etiquette that might be getting me ignored or is this just a programming issue

the courtesy tone is totally normal, that just means the repeater controller is letting people know the channel is clear and its okay for the next person to transmit. most repeaters have them. so thats not your problem.

for the CTCSS thing - first thing id check is whether your radio is set to transmit the tone but NOT receive it. on a lot of baofengs the menu has separate settings for T-CTCS (transmit) and R-CTCS (receive) and sometimes people accidentally set the receive one too which means the radio will only unsquelch when it hears that tone coming back. if the repeater isnt sending a tone on its output then youll hear nothing even though its working fine. set your R-CTCS to off and your T-CTCS to 100.0 and try again.

also just double check your offset is right. 2 meter repeaters are usually minus 600 kHz. if your offset is going the wrong direction youre transmitting on the output frequency instead of the input and yeah the repeater will never hear you.

went through the exact same thing when i first started lol. baofengs are great radios for the price but the programming is honestly kind of a nightmare until you get used to it. what helped me was just using CHIRP software to program it from my laptop instead of trying to do it through the keypad - so much easier to see what youre actually setting.

and yeah like the other guy said, etiquette wise you're probably fine, most repeater users are pretty welcoming to new folks. just identify yourself and maybe after you key up wait a second or two before you start talking, sometimes there's a hang time on the repeater before it opens up and if you start talking right away your first word or two gets clipped.