so i've just come back from holiday running uh well quite a few pileups uh actually
jolly good fun but it reminded me that there's a reason for the fanatic alphabet okay
there are some people who use the phonetic alphabet incorrectly and there's some people
who don't use information alphabet phonetic alphabet and they do it quite well so let's
just take a couple of examples so there was a and i won't find it won't embarrass anybody or try to
call anybody out i'm not interested in doing that but if i'm giving you a report of four and one
all right but i can't hear your call sign all right i just can't hear it now there is an excuse
if you are using the phonetic alphabet all right there is an excuse potentially because
i for some reason i just can't hear golf yeah to say germany for instance and this is the
alternative phonetic alphabet look it up it's on google we'll have a look at a minute
if now i'm lucky i'm m0mcx my uncle sign and then my club call sign is mike zero x-ray x-ray
x-ray tango that's right and in the main people can hear that but maybe it's the way i say it
so just because you're an old-timer or maybe you're new and you just you know we all like to be
a bit different don't we all right but having mike charlie x-ray there's no way i'm going to start
saying xylophone for the last letter i think i did once i just don't you know mexico canada xylophone
whatever it's just not on really and the reason it's not on is there's been a number of variations
of the international kind of military come nato standard phonetic alphabet where there's been
serious accidents people have died and all sorts of other things because one letter got mixed up so
there was baker there was germany there was of quite a lot of the phonetic alphabet gradually
over the years has changed and changed and changed until now you know it is alpha bravo charlie delta
and so on and so forth all the way down to zulu because it's very difficult to mix up one letter
with another apart from a couple of situations which i'm just about to tell you about
this comes down to if you're if you're dxing uh and you're either answering a dxa um
or you you're maybe running a pileup i don't know but let's let's take the let's take the um
the scenario where you can hear these guys really loud you know really loud italy zulu
one alpha bravo charlie really loud all right now chances are is that loud you'd be running
an amplifier okay and you come along with your proxy little hundred watt station
all right expecting psychologically him to be able to hear you as well as you can hear him that's not
gonna be happening okay he might be kind and give you a five and seven the reality is you're going
to be four and three you know you just are right you're lost in the background noise so if you are
i don't know we'll just say a uh i'll just make a call sign up g1 abc it doesn't matter in fact the
um one of the reasons for this video is the guy who was responding to me had seemed to have a
problem saying lima okay lima and it sounded like llama or something so stay phonetic out
international standard military phonetic alphabet the one we're all told to because a dxo will know
even if he normally only gets partial a little bit of it he'll know oh it's m0 mcx it's g1 abc
and there's a there's a kind of a tone and a pace about all this which is be very clear now
years and years ago when i was on the 11 meter band i had an ft 101 zd mark iii walk bands
pathetic isn't it just for cb but anyway but i used to watch the power meter and i
still get i have to have the habit of watching the power meter and the swr
and you can tell how well you are mod well do it that way around because when you're looking at me
to be doing this wouldn't it so if you notice that a couple of the letters are really low
down chances are you're saying it quietly and just don't realize it so i've got like an automatic
compression on my voice i almost don't need a processor but some people are very quiet and
they tail off the particularly the last letter of your call sign mike zero mike charlie x-ray
now when there's no qrm and qsb you can hear that but if there's qrm qrn
qsp and how any other qr cues we can come up with don't tail off that last letter same with our
numbers by the way be very clear one you know two five you quite often hear me say um in fact i say
mike i literally go micah it's almost two and if you hear me on my live streams calling cq
it almost sounds like micah you know two two letters however if you've tried all that
and it still doesn't work then by all means just just shock shock the hold on a minute
so there's a couple of dents in my i don't know how they got there anyway so if you've tried
everything and all else fails by all means go and find a different word
perhaps from the old phonetic alphabet the one i think that was redeveloped in the 50s
just to shock the operator at the other game and go oh golf it's not going to germany now
i can hear you for whatever reason but use it as a last resort in my opinion
not a first resort i know we all want to be different than everything else mexico canada x-ray
whatever i remember doing that as an m3 but then after a while i thought you know a lot of people
don't know what the hell i'm on about they want mike charlie x-ray if you're an old-timer think
about it if you're new at the game well think about it as well all right i know you want to be
different we all love being a bit different don't we we'll be different in something else but not
with your call sign that phonetic alphabet needs to be nurtured and catered for and looked after
and people like you and i can do that right before we go let's just quickly uh have a look at the
because it's quite interesting uh here we are phonetic alphabet wikipedia right that knows
everything doesn't it and it will have down here i seem to remember the history of here
we are history in 1966 nato modified the then set of code words used by the international saviation
civil aviation organization oh yes are they slightly different no that's interesting if you
know about that let me know gosh they enlisted the help of the harvard university's psychoacoustic
laboratory asking them to determine the most successful word for each letter well now we know
and if you like the style of this one or if you don't like the style of this one if you want to
watch more things that you don't like surf through the channel there's plenty other videos mostly
about ham radio okay so all the best for now i will see you on the next one a very good day bye