Table 2-1—Phonetic Alphabet
Adhere strictly to prescribed procedures. Up-to-
date R/T procedures are found in
Radiotelephone Procedure, ACP 125.
Transact your business and get off the air.
Excessive preliminary calls waste time.
DO NOT:
Transmit while surrounded by others loudly
discussing the next maneuver or event. It
confuses the receiving stations and could be a
serious security violation.
Hold the handset button in the push-to-talk
position until absolutely ready to transmit. Your
carrier will block other communications on the
net.
Hold a handset in such a position that there is a
possibility of having feedback from the earphone
added to other background noises.
Hold a handset loosely. A firm pressure on the
push-to-talk button prevents unintentional
release and consequent signal dropout.
Tie up a circuit with test signals. Usually, 10
seconds is sufficient for testing.
PHONETIC ALPHABET
Some letters of the alphabet have similar sounds;
therefore, it is easy to confine the sounds of these
letters. For this reason, the standard phonetic
equivalents of the letters of the alphabet are used in R/T
communications. Using the phonetic alphabet saves
many corrections and constant repetitions that would
otherwise be necessary. Table 2-1 contains the alphabet
with a list of its phonetic and spoken equivalents. The
bolded portions of the spoken equivalents are the parts
of the word that should be given the greatest emphasis
when spoken.
When signals from naval signal books are
transmitted by voice, names of flags (ALFA, BRAVO,
and so on) are used since they appear in the signal
books. Difficult words within the text of plain text
messages may be phonetically spelled, using the
phonetic alphabet, preceded by the proword I SPELL.
When the operator can pronounce the word to be
spelled, he or she does so before and after the spelling of
the word to be identified. For example, a phrase in a
2-3
plain text message might contain the words “Kisatchie
Reservation.” Upon reaching these two words, the
operator would say, “. . .Kisatchie, I SPELL, KILO,
INDIA, SIERRA, ALFA, TANGO, CHARLIE,
HOTEL, INDIA, ECHO, Kisatchie, Reservation . . .”
(rest of text).
