Got my Technician license last week and having fun hearing stations around the US and even other continents with my son, but haven't made first QSO yet. In programming my new FT-891 for the 6 meter repeaters near Atlanta, I must be doing it wrong as I'm not getting any tone or ID back from the repeaters?
1. FM settings- set to Enable
2. T/DCS- set to CTCSS Encode
3. Tone- entered per ARRL directory
4. RPT- set to negative offset
Not hearing anything from the repeaters or other hams when I transit my Callsign and standby. On tutorial videos there is a tone or voice ID when you successfully ping a repeater? Am pretty sure they're in range, as I have a new OCF dipole hung approx 40' up and those repeaters are between 6 and 15 miles away. Also tried FM simplex 52.525 and SSB 50.125 repeatedly with no luck.
Different topic- looking at the MUF maps, looks like 10M SSB isn't likely but does anybody in the Southeast have success there currently?
Have been trying that on 28.4 and 28.380...
73,
Eli
KN4YPT
I don't have any hard and fast answers, but some thoughts. 6 Meter FM is vertical polarization, and you are horizontal, so that is at least 20 dB down to start with. Not sure how high the 6 meter repeater you are trying to hit is. Of course are you sure it is on the air? Can you get some local help from someone who is on that repeater? Do you ever hear it ID? Can you travel to near the repeater site with a simple vertical (mobile) antenna and try hitting it?
Now on to the 52.525 FM simplex frequency. I have never in my nearly 50 years of hamming heard anyone on 52.525.
No one would ever monitor that frequency because "there isn't anyone on it"

As for 50.125, It is fairly active during the sporadic E season. BUT the sporadic E season is over. It ended in August. Of course they can be openings occasionally, but unless you you monitor 24/7/365, you are not liable to hear anything there until the next season. There is a small short sporadic E season coming up in December.
ALSO, hate to tell you this but activity on 6 meter SSB and CW has been greatly reduced (my guess by a factor of 10) from the rise of FT8 on 50.313. "everyone" is over on 50.313 FT8 looking for DX. Oh sure not "everyone", but if I was to to guess the 2019 Es season was 90 percent FT8 and 10 percent SSB and CW. A couple of years ago this would not have been true.
You "need" to get on 6 meter FT8 if you want contacts. THAT SAID. There is no point in getting on 6 meter FT8 now. I monitored it all day today, and heard one local station. The only thing you are going to hear is ground wave. Oh sure you could get on meteor scatter (you need software WSJT-x for this too) and if you have a yagi you can work it out to 1100 miles or so. You need to join pingjockey.net to co-ordinate contacts.
https://www.pingjockey.net/cgi-bin/pingtalk/10 meters... Well sort of like 6 meters. We are all over on FT8. There were quite a bit of South Americans coming thru today. I worked Liberia a couple of days ago. Again all on FT8. There is some SSB and CW, more so than 6 meters, but again FT8 predominates.