okay so i just got my technician license about three weeks ago and ive been trying to get into the local 2m repeater. i can hear people talking on it just fine but when i key up nobody seems to hear me, or at least they dont respond. i checked the repeater directory and it lists a 100.0 Hz tone but im not totally sure if im programming that as the transmit tone or the receive tone or both. my radio is a baofeng uv-5r and honestly the menus are a nightmare to figure out.

also i noticed some people just start talking and others seem to wait a second before saying anything. is there some kind of procedure im supposed to follow? like do i just say my callsign and wait or what. i dont want to be that guy who does everything wrong on his first few transmissions lol. any help appreciated, been lurking here for a while and everyone seems really knowledgeable.

The CTCSS thing trips up almost everybody at first, dont worry about it. On most repeaters you only need to set the transmit tone - that's the subaudible tone your radio sends out when you key up, and the repeater uses it to decide whether to open its squelch and retransmit you. The receive tone setting on your radio is different, that's for YOUR radio to filter out other signals, and most people just leave that off unless the repeater is in a noisy area.

So for the UV-5r you want to go into the menu and set T-CTCS to 100.0 Hz and leave R-CTCS alone or set it to off. There's a bunch of YouTube walkthroughs for programming that specific radio and honestly that's probably your fastest path forward because the manual is genuinely terrible.

As for etiquette - yeah there's a kind of loose rhythm to it. Most folks will finish a transmission, unkey, wait a beat or two for the repeater tail to drop, and then the next person keys up. If you want to join a conversation that's already going, wait for a pause between exchanges and just say your callsign. Something like "KD9XYZ monitoring" or just your call. People will usually acknowledge you. Jumping in mid-conversation isn't the end of the world but waiting for a natural break is the polite thing.

yeah what he said about the tone. also one thing i had to learn the hard way - after you program everything make sure you actually save it to the channel and not just leave it in VFO mode or the settings wont stick. i spent like an hour thinking my radio was broken and it was just that lol

oh and some repeaters have a courtesy tone, that little beep after someone unkeys, and thats kind of your cue that the repeater is ready for the next person to go. not all of them have it but when you hear it just know thats the system saying "okay go ahead." you'll pick up the rhythm pretty quick once you start listening for a bit.