okay so i just got my technician license last month and ive been trying to get on the local FM repeater but i keep hearing other people just fine and when i transmit nobody seems to hear me or respond. i programmed the offset correctly i think, the frequency is 147.195 with a plus offset and i found on the club website that it requires a 100hz tone but i wasnt sure if that means i program the tone into my radio for transmit or receive or both or what. im using a baofeng uv-5r if that matters.

also just kind of a general question - when i do finally get it working, is there like a proper way to jump into a conversation that's already going on or do i just key up and start talking? i dont want to be that guy who does something embarrassing on his first time actually using a repeater lol

Welcome to the hobby, dont stress too much about it. The 100hz CTCSS tone (sometimes called PL tone depending on who you talk to, it's a Motorola trademark thing) goes on your transmit only in almost every case. The repeater's receiver is listening for that tone before it opens up, so if you dont encode it on TX the machine just ignores you. Your radio will still let you hear whatever comes out of the repeater without needing a tone on receive - that's just a squelch thing you can set separately if you want.

On the Baofeng you want to go into the channel settings and look for something like T-CTCS and set that to 100hz, leave R-CTCS off or set to off. If you programmed it with Chirp it's even easier, just fill in the Tone column.

As for jumping into a QSO already in progress, I'd just wait for a break between overs and then say your callsign. Something like just throwing out your call during the pause is perfectly fine and folks will usually acknowledge you. Most people are happy to have someone new check in.

yeah what he said about the tone is right. i made the same mistake when i first started, had the tone set on receive instead of transmit and was totally baffled why nobody could hear me for like two weeks haha. also some repeaters have DCS codes instead of CTCSS which is a different animal but you'd see that on the club page if that was the case.

one thing i'll add about etiquette - if the repeater has a net going on at a scheduled time, maybe hold off on ragchewing until after. some repeaters run like a weekly net on Tuesday nights or whatever and it can be a little awkward to jump in mid-net unless the net control specifically asks for check-ins from general stations. most clubs post their net schedule on the same page as the repeater info so worth a look.