okay so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i finally got my HT programmed up for the local 2m repeater. the club website says it uses a 100.0 Hz tone but when i key up i can hear myself on the output but nobody ever responds and honestly im not even sure if im getting into the repeater or just hearing my own radio do something weird.

also i was on there last night and somebody was having a long conversation for like 45 minutes straight and i didnt want to interrupt but i also kind of needed to ask a question. is there like a standard way to break in? i didnt want to be rude but i also wasnt sure if just saying my callsign was the right move or if thats considered bad manners. my elmer mentioned kerchunking being a bad thing but i wasnt sure exactly what counts as that.

sorry if these are dumb questions, still figuring all this out

not dumb at all, everyone starts somewhere. so the CTCSS thing - 100.0 Hz is a pretty common tone and if you're hearing the repeater tail (that little blip or kerchunk sound after someone unkeys) then you're definitely getting in. what radio do you have? some of the cheaper HTs have the tone set to transmit only and you might accidentally have it set to also require tone to open the squelch on receive, which would mean you're missing half the conversation. worth double checking that setting.

as for breaking in on a QSO, yeah just saying your callsign during a pause between transmissions is totally fine and pretty standard. most folks will recognize that as someone wanting to get in and they'll acknowledge you. the long pause between overs is your window. kerchunking is more like just keying up with no ID and no intention to say anything, basically just testing to see if you hit the repeater - some people don't mind it, others do, so just throwing your call out is always the safer move.

yeah what he said about the squelch decode thing, caught me out too when i first got my baofeng set up lol. also just to add - some repeaters around here are linked to like a regional network and the roundtables on those can go on FOREVER. i once waited almost an hour to check in during a net that ran way over. totally normal to feel awkward about it but people are generally pretty welcoming if you just toss your call in during a gap, nobody bites