David Williams50

I went back and forth on this for way longer than I should have, probably over a year just kept putting it off. What finally pushed me was wanting to be able to volunteer as a VE and also just kind of... not having that thing in the back of my head that I hadnt finished it yet. The advanced theory sections are harder than general for sure but if you understand the concepts rather than just memorizing you'll retain more of it. Some of it like the filter Q stuff and the transmission line equations actually came up when I was troubleshooting some feedline issues I was having, so it wasnt totally useless. I'd say just do it. Worst that happens is you dont pass the first time which is not a big deal at all.

i did mine like six months ago and was in the same boat, pretty overwhelmed at first. i ended up using the Gordon West study book because someone on another forum reccomended it and it was pretty easy to follow. it walks through things in a way that actually makes sense instead of just throwing questions at you. i also used hamstudy alongside it. took me maybe a month of casual studying. one thing i'll say is dont skip the electrical theory questions even if they seem intimidating, theres actually only a handful of them and once you see the pattern in how theyre worded its not bad at all. good luck with it

Hey, welcome to the hobby. So the encode/decode thing trips a lot of new folks up. Encode means your radio is sending the CTCSS tone along with your voice when you transmit — that's what the repeater needs to hear before it'll open up and retransmit you. Decode means your radio will only break squelch when it hears a tone coming back on the receive side. For getting into a repeater you really only need encode turned on. Decode is mostly a personal preference thing, some people turn it on so they dont hear random carriers or other repeaters on the same frequency, but it wont affect whether the repeater hears you. Now the Baofeng — make sure you've got the offset set correctly too. Most 2m repeaters around 146.940 use a -600 kHz offset, meaning your radio transmits on 146.340. If your offset is wrong or not set at all you could be transmitting on the wrong frequency entirely and the repeater would never hear you. Double check that first honestly because that's the most common thing I see with new folks on the UV-5R. As for calling, most people just wait for the repeater to go quiet then key up and say something like your callsign and that you're monitoring or looking for a contact. No need to be formal about it, just be yourself.