The Phonetic Alphabet

The Phonetic Alphabet

Another series of codes you hear often in many forms of radio communications is the Phonetic Alphabet.  The Phonetic Alphabet is used when spelling out a word or name and when relaying information about letters, as in 'Charlie Tango'.

It was developed by NATO in the 1950s to avoid the misunderstanding caused by poor radio acoustics where an S and an F for example are easily confused. It replaced other phonetic alphabets , such as the RAF phonetic alphabet, Western Front slang or "signalese".

Royal navy phonetic alphabet and the US military "able baker" alphabet. The experiences of which were used to produce the Nato standard. Certain non English speaking countries use special umlaut characters which have their own extensions and are not covered here.

 It is worth having an understanding of these terms so I have compiled a complete list of  the phonetic alphabet in a chart in this post as well as making it available to you as a download so you can keep it by your radio for easy reference.

 It may be useful to keep a copy of the phonetic alphabet on hand for reference near your radio so I have created a downloadable copy of these codes here :- DOWNLOAD FILE

YouTube Video

 What is the Phonetic Alphabet?

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