so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (tech) and i finally got a baofeng uv-5r set up to hit the local 2m repeater. the club's website lists the repeater as 146.820 minus offset with a 100hz tone. i programmed it in and i can hear traffic on the repeater just fine but when i key up nobody seems to come back to me.

i did a radio check last tuesday during what sounded like a net and one of the guys said he couldnt hear me. my signal was getting into the repeater though because i could hear my own audio coming back. so thats not the problem i think. somebody mentioned i might have the tone set wrong or maybe its a tone squelch issue on my end - honestly im not totally clear on the difference between using a CTCSS tone to access the repeater versus having tone squelch enabled on receive. do those do different things? i dont want to keep stepping on conversations if im doing something wrong.

also is there a proper way to ask for a radio check without interrupting people mid-QSO? i just kind of jumped in between transmissions which felt awkward.

yeah those are two different things and it trips up a lot of new hams so dont feel bad. the transmit tone (sometimes called encode) is what you send to open the repeater's squelch - without it the repeater just ignores your signal. that 100hz you programmed is for that, so if youre hearing yourself through the machine then yeah the encode side sounds right.

the receive tone squelch (decode) is totally separate - that just controls whether YOUR radio opens up to hear the repeater output. most people leave that off so they hear everything coming through, which is probably fine for you right now. if you had it set wrong on receive it would explain why maybe you werent hearing replies clearly or at all.

as for radio checks, the usual thing is to wait for a pause and just say your callsign and ask if anyone can give you a signal report. most folks are happy to help. jumping in between turns during an active QSO is fine as long as youre quick about it - just say your call, they'll usually finish up and come back to you. dont worry too much about it, repeater users expect new people to be figuring things out.

the baofeng thing might also just be an audio issue honestly. those radios can be a bit hot on the mic and some repeaters dont love them. worth checking if your deviation is way off but thats harder to test without another radio or someone nearby to listen. if you have a local club meeting coming up somebody there could probably give you a proper signal report in person and tell you if youre sounding distorted or whatever.

also some repeaters around here have linked systems so sometimes a net is happening across like 4 or 5 machines at once and things get a little chaotic with timing. could be your break was just getting lost in the linking delay.