^^^^^ THIS! I often have difficulty with Zulu and Uniform in my call. I start with NATO phonetics but if it doesn't work in two tries, I use Zanzibar and United which almost always work. Zero is sometimes a problem too, but I can't think of a suitable replacement!
Ask a Russian controller to spell a fix and he will use international standard Phonetics. Guess what, their military uses the same phonetic code. When it comes to temperature, everyone uses C. All aviation weather is in C. Same with all maritime weather. Same with military weather. When I give my PAs in the States to my passengers, I must convert temps from C to F. Nowhere else on the earth do we do that. Time to switch to the metric system, so we can be STANDARD with the rest of the planet. The standard phonetic code was chosen to not have any two sound the same. When used well, no translation is done. When you make up your own, translation is required. That defeats the purpose. If you don’t like standard phonetics, why waste your time making up one. Just say the letter, which is just fine.
Bryan we think alike. As a chemist I know that one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree celcius, which is one percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole (6.023X10^23) of atoms in it. Now to use American system, the answer to "How much energy does it take to boil a room temperature gallon of water? is "Go screw yourself " because you can't directly relate any of those quantities. (Now I didn't come up with this on my own but I cannot cite the source so please don't accuse me of plagiarism!) But all of this is for another thread on another site.
The act of defying the worldwide standard is mostly an exercise in assertion of ego. Ego, as in selfishness, self-importance and self-centeredness.
Are we actually doing this again? Again I say, listen to a few phone pileups on HF and it will become quite obvious why alternate phonetics are occasionally necessary. The fact that we seem to be doing a weekly thread on this seems to show that some of us need to get off the screen and on the air. There, I said it.
Of course it's always cute to have special phonetics for your callsign ... I think most everybody has them. I have several! ... but to be understood internationally, the phonetic alphabet is really the only way to go. When you stop to think that hams in other countries may be struggling just to communicate with you in English, it makes standardized phonetics all the more important. Additionally, for those hams who think they're gonna be relevant in an actual emergency communications event, well ... just know that professional radio operators won't want to hear your cutesy phonetics ... they're gonna want to get the job done, and they've been trained with this standard.
That's because the internationally accepted language ATC is English - surely you know that! There is NO universal language for ham radio. I switch between APCO and NATO all the time (2 standards wildly accepted right there). I use NATO first on the air with other hams, but when it doesn't get thru I use words that get thru better. Quite often, Germany is better than Golf, Japan is better than Juliet, especially when working with non-native English speakers. If you're working a DX station with little English skills, JAPAN is understood, JULIET is often not. It's not a common English word, and anyone working DX has probably worked Japan. You just illustrated that standards are not necessary universal. 90% of the time I use NATO. If I have been trying to work a DX station and he's having difficulty with NATO, but is good with Countries (an example), then I'll use what works rather than repeat what doesn't. My main issue is trying to make ham radio something it's not. It's not a public safety, ATC, whatever - communications system. It's AMATEUR RADIO. We talk about things and go on with long winded transmissions about the weather, our antennas, etc., that you don't do basically anywhere else. We had some attitudes in my local area that the repeaters were for emergencies - no rag chewing. Now, the repeaters are dead and being taken off the air, and simplex is thriving. This should have never happened in the first place, and people trying to make amateur radio something that it isn't rubs me the wrong way. Likewise, I laugh when I hear a weather net being conducted on the repeater - it's full of long winded, unnecessary chatter that would be cause for a major ass-chewing or "training opportunity" if this occurred on our primary fire dispatch channel. And that's OK....
APCO phonetics are what is used by most dispatch agencies here in the US - "Adam, Boy, Charles, David" - not NATO. So once again, pick the right "standard" for the job...
Yep - What David said ... !! And although to most, it may be intuitive, in radio operation terminology, there is NEVER a "0000Z" -- Ever. You can start or stop events by clearly stating either 2359Z for the end of the radio day .... or 0001Z for the beginning. This, along with the actual date, eliminates any confusion about the date the planned event starts and stops.
Yep that's true Stephen!! ... but local municipalities are slowly migrating to the "NATO" standard .... and the more our civil authorities work toward interoperability (which is a keyword in the post-9/11 world), the less we're gonna see of the old "Adam 12" phonetics. After all, the goal is to be understood .... regardless what arena we're working in, the best way to be understood is by agreement on the standards for that arena. Just saying. Oh, and opnote #2: Since the introduction of P25 where everyone sounds like Stephen Hawking, it's even tougher to tell "Yokohama" from "oh, my mama" .... just sayin' again.
Can you point to reference for this? The reasoning for the NATO phonetics was to be understood across several languages (NATO countries) which is not usually the situation for US dispatchers. Furthermore, APCO phonetics are MUCH faster. Try it!
Some pilots here arguing for no deviation from NATO phonetics but it would be well to remember that pilots communicate almost all the time over a VHF or UHF channel with little fading or noise. But let's suppose a pilot is struggling to be understood by ATC using HF SSB on a long haul flight under poor ionospheric conditions, and none of the other assigned HF frequencies are any better. He tries using JULIET several times without success. Should he just keep doing what doesn't work because it's a "standard"? Or should he try a different word, such as JAPAN and get the job done? (like amateurs).
To N0TZU: It is simply not true "that pilots communicate almost all the time over a VHF or UHF channel with little fading or noise." They use HF SSB for all intercontinental flights, and VHF-AM for line-of-sight. They have high background noise levels which necessitate use close-talking microphones, and often have to use headphones. They have multiple radios and alarms and cockpit conversation and noise. They are communicating with multiple nationalities and accents and English-as-a-second-language. All of the pilots' communication situations have challenging understandability. It is very similar to ham radio, HF SSB or VHF/UHF simplex. "Cute Phonetics" that hams use on FM or DMR repeaters are simply not appropriate for EMCOMM or international contacts, especially not appropriate on HF SSB. Do what you like with your local net, where everyone knows your callsign anyway. Do what you like with your ego-based contest phonetics. Do what you are required on domestic commercial or government 2-way radio dispatch channels. Ham operators that have English as a second language are often confused by the Cute Phonetics that Americans come up with.
