ok so i just got my technician license about three weeks ago and ive been trying to get into the local FM repeater scene. theres a repeater listed in the directory for my area, 146.820 with a minus offset, and it says the tone is 100.0 Hz. i programmed that into my baofeng and when i key up i can hear myself come through but nobody ever responds and i dont know if thats because the repeater is just quiet or if im doing something wrong with the tone or what.

also i noticed there's another listing nearby that just says "tone required" but doesnt say what the tone IS. how am i supposed to figure that out? is there like a universal default or something? i tried 88.5 because i saw that mentioned somewhere but nothing happened. my radio is set to encode the tone on transmit but im not sure if i need to also decode it on receive or if thats separate. this whole CTCSS thing is more confusing than i expected honestly

hey welcome to the hobby, dont stress too much about this stuff it clicks pretty quick. so the CTCSS tone thing - you only need to encode it on transmit, the tone is basically just a key that tells the repeater "hey im allowed to use you" and opens up the squelch on their end. you dont necessarily need to set your radio to decode it on receive unless you want to filter out other traffic on that frequency, which honestly when youre just starting out you probably want to hear everything so you can learn whats going on.

as for the quiet repeater, that's totally normal. a lot of repeaters just dont have much activity anymore, people have kinda moved to linked systems and DMR and stuff. try keying up and just saying your callsign and "monitoring" and give it a few minutes. also the "tone required" listing without an actual tone listed is super annoying and unfortunately pretty common - your best bet is to look up the repeater trustee or find if theres a local club that owns it and just ask them directly. some clubs have their own websites with updated info. the repeaterbook website also sometimes has comments from users that mention the tone even if the main listing doesnt

yeah what he said about the tone. one thing i'll add - a lot of repeaters around here are linked into networks like IRLP or EchoLink or even Allstar so sometimes the traffic you hear sounds weird or delayed, dont let that throw you off. and repeater etiquette-wise, when you first get on just listen for a while before transmitting a lot. some repeaters have a sort of unwritten "regular crew" and they can be a bit territorial lol, not all of them but some. just listen, id yourself, and feel it out. you'll figure out the vibe pretty fast.