okay so ive been licensed for about three months now and just got my first real HT, a Yaesu FT-65. been trying to get into the local 2m repeater (147.255 with a + offset) and i can hear people on it just fine but when i try to transmit nobody seems to hear me. checked the frequency and offset and those seem right. someone at the club mentioned something about a CTCSS tone but honestly i got a little lost when they explained it. from what i understand its like a subaudible tone you have to send with your transmission so the repeater actually opens up? but i have no idea what tone this repeater uses or how to even find that out. is there like a database or something i should be checking. also is there any ettiquete i should know about before i start jumping in, i dont want to be that guy who does something embarrassing on the air

yeah you basically got it right on the CTCSS thing. its a low frequency tone that rides along with your audio and tells the repeater to open the squelch and retransmit you. without it most repeaters will just ignore you, which sounds like exactly whats happening. best place to look up the tone is repeaterbook dot com, just search your area and find the repeater by its output frequency and it'll usually list the PL tone right there. a lot of people still call it PL tone which is just an old Motorola tradename for the same thing, dont let that confuse you. once you find it you program it into your radio as the transmit tone, the FT-65 calls it T-SQL or CTCSS TX in the menu i think, been a while since i messed with one.

as for etiquette, honestly the biggest thing is just listen for a bit before you transmit, get a feel for whether theres a conversation going on. if the repeater goes quiet for a few seconds after a transmission thats usually your window to key up and just say your callsign. most regulars on local machines are pretty welcoming to new hams, just dont dead key the repeater over and over trying to test it when people might be mid-qso

repeaterbook is the move like the other guy said. also some repeater clubs have their own websites with all the technical info so worth googling the trustee callsign if you can find it. oh and one thing nobody told me when i was new - some repeaters are linked to other repeaters through systems like IRLP or AllStar and when they are, there might be extra tones or a courtesty beep you hear after someone unkeys. the courtesty beep is basically the repeaters way of saying ok your turn, its polite to wait for it before you start talking otherwise you might step on the tail end of what someone was saying. took me a little while to figure that out and i definitely accidentally walked over a few conversations before someone nicely explained it to me on air lol