so i got my technician a few months ago and ive been on 2m mostly just doing local repeater stuff and i notice some people use the NATO phonetics like alpha bravo charlie and some people just say the actual letters when theyre giving their callsign. im a bit confused about when youre supposed to use one vs the other. like is there a rule or is it just preference? i asked on the repeater and got kind of a vague answer so figured id ask here.

also i notice some guys use different words sometimes, heard someone say London instead of Lima the other day which threw me off. is that a regional thing or just old habits?

yeah there's no hard rule saying you HAVE to use NATO phonetics every single time, its more of a best practice thing especially when conditions are rough or theres any chance of confusion. on a clear local repeater with nobody stepping on each other you can usually just rattle off your callsign as letters and everyone gets it fine. but if youre doing HF or anything where the signal is marginal, phonetics save a lot of back and forth.

the London vs Lima thing — yeah that happens, some older ops learned a different phonetic alphabet before NATO got standardized and they just never fully switched over. you'll also hear Whiskey vs Washington, or some guys who make up their own for whatever reason. it can be annoying when youre trying to copy a callsign and youre not sure if they said November or something else starting with N. stick to NATO and youll be fine, most people will understand you anywhere in the world which is kind of the whole point of standardizing it in the first place.

honestly i spent way too long being weird about this when i first started. just use phonetics whenever theres any doubt and dont stress about it. the NATO ones are worth memorizing properly tho because if you ever do any emcomm stuff or get into HF DX pileups you really dont want to be the guy saying something non-standard in a busy net, people will just not understand you and move on