okay so i just got my technician license about three weeks ago and ive been trying to get on the local 2 meter repeater. i can hear people talking just fine but when i key up nobody seems to hear me or respond. i looked up the repeater on repeaterbook and it shows a CTCSS tone of 100.0 Hz but im honestly not totally sure if ive programmed that into my radio correctly.

i have a baofeng uv-5r and i went into the menu and set what i think is the transmit tone, but theres like two different tone settings in there and i dont know if i need to set both or just one. someone at my club mentioned something about encode vs decode and i kind of nodded along but i didnt really follow what he meant. do i need to set a tone for receiving too or just for transmitting? and does the repeater actually send a tone back out that i should be squelching on?

also a separate question - when i do finally get this sorted out, is there a proper way to join a conversation thats already going on? i dont want to step on anyone or be rude about it. any help appreciated, this stuff is harder than the test made it seem lol

For the tone confusion - you only need to set the encode side for most repeaters. That's the tone your radio transmits so the repeater knows to open up. The decode setting is if you want your radio to stay quiet until it hears a specific tone coming back from the repeater, which some people use to avoid hearing random noise or other traffic they dont care about. Most folks just leave decode off or set it to carrier squelch and let the radio open on any signal.

On the baofeng specifically, menu item 13 is T-CTCS (your transmit tone) and menu 14 is R-CTCS (receive tone). Set 13 to 100.0 and leave 14 on off unless you specifically want that feature. If you still arent getting into the repeater after that, double check your offset too - most 2 meter repeaters use a 600 kHz offset and you need to make sure youre transmitting on the right input frequency.

As for joining a conversation, just wait for a pause between transmissions and say your callsign. something like just your call is perfectly fine, most people will recognize youre trying to check in and bring you into the conversation. Dont stress it too much, the regulars on a good repeater are usually pretty welcoming to new folks.

yeah the two tone settings tripped me up when i first started too, took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out why nobody could hear me and it turned out i had set the wrong one. once you get it sorted though it clicks and youll never forget it.

one thing i'd add - some repeaters are linked into systems like IRLP or Echolink or even part of a bigger statewide network, and if thats the case where you are, just be aware that your signal might be going out to a lot more ears than just your county. not saying that to make you nervous, just worth knowing so you introduce yourself properly and dont just say "this is the guy with the baofeng" or whatever. give your full callsign every time, the FCC rules on that havent changed just because were on a machine haha