so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i mostly do 2m FM around my area, pretty casual stuff. one thing that kind of confuses me is when people use phonetics and when they just say the letter. like sometimes ill hear someone just say their callsign straight out like W4AB or whatever and other times people go full november foxtrot and everything. is there a rule for this or is it just like a feel thing based on conditions

also i noticed on some of the more crowded repeaters nobody really does phonetics at all during normal conversation but then during nets they go full NATO. is that just a net thing or am i missing something about when youre supposed to use them

pretty much a feel thing honestly, at least on FM. if the band is clear and your signal is solid most people just say the call normal. where phonetics really earn their keep is when its noisy or youre on HF and the other station is struggling to copy you, or if your call has letters that sound similar like B and D or M and N. on a busy net the control operator usually wants phonetics for the callsign so theres no confusion in the log, makes sense when youre handling a bunch of check-ins back to back

on 2m ragchew with someone local i know, i never bother. just say it. but if i hear someone having trouble copying me ill throw the phonetics in without thinking about it at that point

yeah what he said basically. i used to stress about this when i first got my ticket and honestly the answer is just use them when it seems like it would help. nobody is going to come after you for not saying november on a local repeater. the NATO phonetics are kind of a HF and weak signal thing more than anything, when youre trying to pull a callsign out of QRM on 20m you really need them otherwise you end up with like 3 or 4 requests for fills and everyone gets annoyed lol