so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i still feel kind of awkward about when to actually use phonetics. like on 2m FM repeaters most people just say their callsign normally and nobody seems to use NATO phonetics at all, but then i get on HF and people are going full Alpha Bravo Charlie on everything. is there like an actual rule about this or is it just a culture thing depending on what band youre on. i dont want to sound like im overdoing it on the local repeater but i also dont want to sound like i dont know what im doing on HF. my call has a W and a couple letters that sound similar so maybe it matters more for me idk

yeah its pretty much a culture thing more than a hard rule, at least for routine contacts. on a clear FM repeater where everyone can hear you fine, spelling out Whiskey Kilo Four Foxtrot whatever every single time would get tedious real fast and people would probably find it a little odd honestly. but on HF especially when the band is noisy or youre working someone with a language barrier, phonetics are genuinely useful and expected. DX contacts especially -- if you dont use phonetics when youre calling a rare station in a pileup you might just never get picked up because they cant parse your call from all the noise. i think the general guidance is use phonetics when theres any chance of confusion, so weak signals, lots of QRM, working someone overseas, or just when youre giving your call and you want to make sure it lands clean. on a local 2m ragchew with a guy you talk to every week, probably skip it.

honestly the thing that helped me was just listening more before transmitting. spent a few weeks just monitoring 40m before i ever keyed up and you pretty quickly get a feel for when people use full phonetics vs just saying the call normally. contest operating is a whole other thing too, in a contest nobody has time for full phonetics, they abbreviate everything and go as fast as possible. but for a normal SSB contact when conditions are mediocre, yeah phonetics just make the whole thing smoother. your point about letters that sound similar is real -- B and D and E are a nightmare on a noisy band