ok so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i mostly do HF on 40m, some 2m local stuff. my question is kind of dumb but when are you actually supposed to use phonetics vs just saying the letter. like i know NATO phonetics, alpha bravo charlie etc, but sometimes on the local repeater people just say letters normally and other times they spell everything out phonetically and i cant figure out if theres a rule or if its just whatever you feel like

also is it weird to use phonetics on FM when the signal is totally clear? feels like overkill sometimes but then i get nervous and do it anyway especially for my callsign

not a dumb question at all, this confused me for a while too. basically the short answer is you use phonetics when theres any chance the other station might mishear you, so on HF where conditions are always changing that's pretty much always a good idea especially for callsigns and any important info. on a clear FM repeater with full quieting you can kind of read the room — if someone asks you to say your call again then yeah go phonetic, otherwise saying "W4ABC" normally is totally fine

the one thing id say is for your callsign at least go through it phonetically once when you first make contact, then you can just say the letters after that once they know who you are. thats just kind of the standard practice ive noticed over the years. some of the older guys on our local net still phonetic everything every single time which is a bit much but hey its their habit

yeah on ssb I pretty much always use full phonetics, signals can be all over the place and the last thing you want is someone logging your call wrong. on the repeater though honestly half the time i just say my call straight and if someone needs me to repeat i'll go phonetic. saves time on a busy repeater

one thing that trips people up is mixing non-NATO phonetics in there, like saying "easy" instead of echo or whatever. just stick with the standard ones and everyone knows what you mean