A local police department’s officers would understand the local accents of other officers so comprehension is high. It is more difficult to understand some words when two hams with different US regional accents are communicating. One motivation for changing the words in an alphabet is to improve comprehension. In 1948 the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) adopted the words in the NYPD alphabet with the substitution of Baker Lewis Nancy Otto Susan Thomas Zebra. The New York City PD alphabet used a few different names: Charlie Peter Young. Mary Nora Ocean Paul Queen Robert Sam Tom Union Victor William Xray An early alphabet used by the Los Angeles Police Department was based on people’s names: Adam Boy Charles David Edward Frank George Henry Ida John King Lincoln So in my case my plate is Kilo Five Romeo Uniform Delta, using the current NATO phonetic alphabet. The police started using a phonetic alphabet where the first letter of a word is the letter being transmitted. Did the officer, or ham during an event, say “P” or “B”? Unfortunately, English letters are easily confused. An officer calling in a license plate needs to be accurate. Spelling alphabets came about because early users of radios, like police departments, had similar problems with weak or uncertain signals. We use letters selected from a standard phonetic, or spelling, alphabet so nobody fumbles for words.
We’ll give out their bib number and gender, “Rider is female, foxtrot, with bib number, figures, 1234”, for a female with bib 1234. With these events near the limits of repeater coverage it can be a challenge finding a spot that isn’t in a ‘hole’, even using my 50 watt mobile rig.Įvent participants sometimes need assistance so we call in a support vehicle to pick them up. But it’s really amazing how much RF a pine forest can absorb. With spotty cell coverage our radios are the only viable tool. The Sam Houston National Forest is miles away from the repeater we use for communication during the local IronMan and other public service events. It’s a solved problem that was built into radio etiquette long ago. What we say, and how we say it is the key to our brain’s ability to error correct human speech. Okay, but is that really ketchup or catsup? Now think how much easier spelling is on a phone than over a poor quality radio channel.
Then they’ll get stumped mumbling while they think desperately for ‘k’ words… ‘ketchup’. “Was that a ‘b’ or a ‘p’?” Sometimes they’ll try on the fly to use words with the beginning letter trying to convey the letter: “B as in boy”. I’ve been on phone conversations where the person on the other end is spelling for me and it’s painful. Sometimes words just have to be spelled for others.
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