Much to do about nothing comes to mind. I know I said that wrong , but that is what I think . As long as you are not trying to conceal what is being said you are legal . As I remember the part 92 regs. Please correct me if I'm wrong...
You are correct. If I remember correctly, You can not ID using only phonetics. You must ID your station using plain English. But it is OK to also use phonetics to further clarify your callsign. Have Fun.
Since this topic has generated over 20 pages of comments I was wondering how many people agreed or disagreed with the original position of using the NATO Phonetics. I counted 86 unique call signs in this thread and I categorized each call as either Agree, Disagree or Unclear. Unclear meant that the comments made were things like, It doesn't matter as I use CW only, or other topics like promoting UTC, etc. The results are below.
Even if I had 1,000 people it would not be representative of the ham population because it is not a random sample. Rather the sample contains only hams that have the time to troll QRZ like you and I. If the sample size was random you can get statistically meaningful result with only 30 data points.
Wow! I guess you had some spare time on a Saturday morning! But the question, "Should hams use NATO phonetics" is wrong, IMHO, I think the question being debated is "Should hams ONLY use NATO phonetics", as a "standard". That's where I disagree. Every hams should learn and know the NATO standard - it's very useful, accepted, and understood probably 90+% of the time. But it's not perfect, and doesn't work with everyone - especially non-English speaking DX stations. But some here feel if you use "Japan" instead of "Juliet", you're wrong, regardless if it completed the QSO.
Note too the numbers that Bonnie posted. On the air "nine and "five" can sound very similar, hence the "niner", which certainly is common in aviation. The other digits are emphasized in ways you may not in ordinary conversation. Personally, at home I have to be careful not to do these (or "zed" for z) or else my wife thinks I'm showing off!
Well I'm retired and I like looking at data. And I am not drawing conclusions from it rather I simply offer it to clarify the now 22 pages of comments...nothing more or less. I have a small group of hams who gather at my shack on Friday afternoons for a beverage or two and talk radio. I was told yesterday that my original post implied that I insisted that this standard be used and that no other phraseology was acceptable. I never meant to say or imply that only NATO Phonetics must be used. I did mean to say that they should be your first or default choice. But after you say Yankee 2 or three times and you are not getting through then I too would use Yokohama or something else. I am sorry if my intention wasn't clear in my original post.
In close to 60 years operating on the ham bands have yet to detect any "chaos" resulting in the use of phonetics. Your "mileage" may vary.
We have to stick to the rules! The worst thing I ever heard was Zansibar, Z or S ?? Because in Germany we write Sansibar, that caused confusion in a QSO I had last year. The only exception i would accept in a proper situation is when US station say America instead of Alfa, a danish station Danmark instead of Delta, and an italian station Italy instead of India etc. But only if confusion ist not possible in that situation! For times UTC resp. GMT must be standard, have no idea how many time zones existing in the USA and for me there is no need to know that because I expect that an American will always use UTC.
Well I can guarantee if I lay a Kilo Too Stinky Dirty Socks on someone it will slow things down thats for sure. Now back to the yard work for me, stopped by to see if the 10 meter band just might have been cracked open a little for the SA contest. Nothing doing.
Ok, then if Zulu doesn't work, how about Zebra? According to Google Translate that is spelled with a Z in Germany.
