ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and im still a little confused about when youre supposed to use the nato phonetics vs just saying your callsign normally. like i get that Alpha Bravo Charlie etc exists but on most of the nets i check into people just say their callsign pretty fast and dont always spell it out phonetically. is there a rule about this or is it more of a judgment call situation? my callsign has a couple letters that sound similar so sometimes i wonder if the net control even caught it right. also is it weird to use non-nato words? i heard someone say "New York" for N the other day instead of November and wasnt sure if that was wrong or just old school or what

yeah theres no hard rule that you have to phonetic every single transmission, its more about clarity. if conditions are good and your call came through clean then theres no point spelling out every letter. but if theres qrm or the band is noisy or youre working someone new, definitely go phonetic. the whole point is just making sure the other station actually got your call right.

as for the non-nato stuff, technically the ITU recommends the standard NATO alphabet for international use but in practice a lot of older ops use what they grew up with. New York for N, Texas for T, that kind of thing. youll hear it especially on local repeaters where everyone knows each other anyway. its not wrong exactly, just not standardized. if youre doing anything formal like emcomm or working DX stations i would stick to the proper NATO words just to avoid confusion

honestly the mixing of phonetics drives me a little crazy but i get why it happens. i worked a station once where the guy used completely made up words for half his call and i had to ask him to repeat like three times. just use the standard ones, everyone knows them and thats kind of the whole point lol. for nets specifically though a lot of net controls will ask you to phonetic if they didnt catch it, so dont stress too much about it