so ive been licensed about 8 months now and ive gotten like three different answers on this from three different people at the club. the FCC rule is every 10 minutes during a contact and at the end, i get that part. but what about on a net? like the net control already said my callsign when he acknowledged me, does that count? do i still need to say my full call at the end of my transmission every single time?

and then theres the thing about phonetics — some guys at the club insist you always use standard ITU phonetics, no exceptions, and then ive heard other people on the air using like made-up fun phonetics and nobody seems to care. is there an actual rule about that or is it just a best practices thing

i guess my bigger question is how strict are people really about all this in everyday operating vs what the rules technically say. i dont want to be that guy who does everything wrong but i also dont want to be annoying about it either

The ID thing on nets is one of those areas where the practice varies a bit depending on the net. Technically you still need to ID with your own callsign at least every 10 minutes and at the end of your transmission — net control saying your call doesn't satisfy your own ID requirement, that's their ID not yours. In practice on a lot of casual local nets people are pretty relaxed and as long as you give your call clearly when you check in and at sign-off most folks won't say anything. But if you're on a more formal traffic net like NTS stuff they can be pretty particular about procedure.

The phonetics thing — no there's no FCC rule that says you have to use standard ITU phonetics. It's just that standard phonetics exist because they were designed to be understood across language barriers and under poor conditions. The fun ones like "Kentucky" for K or whatever can be fine on a clear local repeater but if you're working someone through noise or they don't speak much English it can actually cause confusion. I'd say learn the standard ones cold so they come out automatically, then feel free to be a little loose when conditions are good and everyone's clearly copying you fine.

yeah honestly the 10 minute rule is kind of a background thing most of the time, like if youre having a long ragchew you just get in the habit of dropping your call every so often and it becomes second nature pretty quick. i was super anxious about it when i first got on the air too

the phonetics thing cracks me up because there's this one older guy on our repeater who uses the most random stuff, like "Zanzibar" for Z and nobody bats an eye. but then i heard someone use non-standard ones on HF during some bad band conditions and it genuinely caused confusion so i think context really is everything there