so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and every time i get on HF someone is using alpha bravo charlie etc and i do try to use it but honestly sometimes i just say the letter especially if the band is clear and the other person can obviously hear me fine. my elmer told me its basically required but then i read somewhere its not actually in the rules? just curious what people actually do in practice because i feel kinda dumb when i forget and say "D as in dog" instead of Delta and then have to correct myself mid-transmission

yeah its not a legal requirement in part 97, its more of a strong convention. the reason everyone pushes NATO phonetics is because theyre specifically chosen to be distinct from each other even on a bad signal — like November and Mike arent going to get confused the same way N and M would if you just said the letter. your "D as in dog" is totally fine and honestly most ops wont care, but the problem comes up when the band is noisy or youre working someone whos not a native english speaker. Delta is gonna land better than Dog in a pileup at 3am with a S7 noise floor trust me. dont stress about correcting yourself, everybody does it

i mess up all the time and just say whatever word pops into my head first lol. called it "Q as in... uh... Quebec" the other day and felt very proud of myself. but seriously i noticed on some of the digital nets people barely even bother because the audio is so clean. on SSB though especially DX contacts yeah you want the real phonetics or things get repeated a lot