The Bellbrook Amateur Radio Club now has a 118.8 Hz tone on both the 2m and 440 repeaters. After the BARC Net last Sunday, we put together some pointers for operating on the repeater with a tone.
The BARC repeater did not use a tone until recently. Without a tone, a repeater responds as soon as it receives a carrier (Carrier Squelch). With a tone, the repeater needs to sample a few cycles to determine if the tone is correct before it opens the squelch so there is some delay. Proper operation on a repeater with a tone is to pause a second or two after pressing PTT before speaking to allow the repeater to open the squelch; otherwise, the first portion of your transmission may be cutoff.
Also, sometimes you may hear an operator call just as another person is signing off and then they get cutoff. This generally indicates that the operator does not have a tone in their radio and is speaking while the squelch is still open from the original caller. Once the squelch tail drops, the operator is no longer heard since they are not using the correct tone to keep the squelch open.