As we have already mentioned in chapter 3, when we were talking
about voice procedure, the sound quality over radios is not
brilliant. As a result of this, it is often difficult to distinguish
between similar sounding words. If the information that you are
sending is not a normal word, then this problem gets even worse. An
example of this is when you are sending a car registration number.
To get round this, the Phonetic Alphabet has been created. This is
basically a list of words, used to "say" letters. This
works because the words, or more importantly the pronunciation, of
these words, are all quite different. It also works because the
person receiving knows what words to expect when someone is spelling
out a word this way. Because of this last point, everyone should
always use the same set of words. The rest of this appendix gives
you the words for each letter of the alphabet, as well as the words
for the digits zero to nine.
Table 1. The Phonetic A to Z
| Letter | Word |
|---|
| A | Alpha |
| B | Bravo |
| C | Charlie |
| D | Delta |
| E | Echo |
| F | Foxtrot |
| G | Golf |
| H | Hotel |
| I | India |
| J | Juliet |
| K | Kilo |
| L | Lima |
| M | Mike |
| N | November |
| O | Oscar |
| P | Papa |
| Q | Quebec |
| R | Romeo |
| S | Sierra |
| T | Tango |
| U | Uniform |
| V | Victor |
| W | Whiskey |
| X | X-Ray |
| Y | Yanky |
| Z | Zulu |
Table 2. The Phonetic 0 to 9
| Digit | Word |
|---|
| 0 | Zero |
| 1 | Wun |
| 2 | Tou (as in You) |
| 3 | ThRee |
| 4 | Fower |
| 5 | FiVe |
| 6 | Sicks |
| 7 | SeVon |
| 8 | Ate |
| 9 | Niner |
