okay so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (tech class) and i finally got a decent HT, a Baofeng UV-5R that a friend gave me. i looked up our local repeater on repeaterbook and it says the input is 146.880 with a minus offset and a CTCSS tone of 100.0 Hz. so i programmed all that in and i can hear people just fine, but when i try to transmit nobody seems to hear me or respond. i checked the offset is set to minus and i put in the 100.0 tone. not sure if the tone is supposed to be on encode only or encode AND decode? i have it set to encode only right now. also is there like some kind of etiquette for just jumping into a conversation thats already happening or should i wait? i dont want to be rude about it. the guys on there seem to know each other pretty well and i feel a bit like im interrupting when i try to key up

the encode only setting is correct for most situations, you only need decode (sometimes called tone squelch) if you want to filter out other traffic you don't want to hear, which honestly on a repeater you usually don't need. so that part sounds fine.

for the not being heard thing - first thing i'd check is whether you're actually hitting the repeater. when you key up do you hear the courtesy tone come back? that little beep after you release the PTT button means the repeater heard you. if you're not getting that then it might just be range or the UV-5R's power output. those things are only 4-5 watts which usually works close in but if you're on the edge of coverage it can be hit or miss.

as for jumping in, the usual way is to just say your callsign during a pause between transmissions. most guys on a local repeater are pretty welcoming to new folks, just wait for a natural gap and say something like "KD9XYZ monitoring" or whatever. they'll usually come back to you.

yeah what he said about the courtesy tone is the key thing to check first. also worth double checking that your offset direction is actually saving correctly on the UV-5R, those things can be a little finicky with the menu system and sometimes it looks like it saved but it reverted. i had that happen to me when i first got mine and i was pulling my hair out for like a week before i figured it out lol

repeater etiquette is pretty relaxed on most machines honestly, just dont just start talking over someone mid-sentence and you'll be fine. listening for a while before jumping in is always a good move anyway