[Amps] 10 Meters

[Ian White, G3SEK]

Peter Chadwick wrote:

>Steve said:
>
>> I usually find that extra syllables in the  phonetics work better.
>
>This is the heart of the matter. There's no other radio service that so
>consistently runs with the low signal to noise and high signal to interference
>levels that the amateur service does. (I don't count CB as a radio service!) So
>the greater syllabic redundancy of the long words helps.

I remember having great difficulty getting a weak Spanish station to 
understand the phonetic "Sierra" in my callsign (in spite of it being a 
Spanish word) but the longer "Santiago" worked immediately.

Likewise there's sometimes too little difference between "Echo" and 
"Kilo"... but "Kilowatt" always works  :-)

>
>Not that I would recommend going back to the 1932 alphabet, where it was
>Xanthippe for X!
>
"X-ray" is a particularly bad choice, because some languages pronounce 
it "ex" and others "ix" - which is probably why the French seem to 
prefer "Xylophone" (pron. "zeel-o-fon", but quite unmistakable after 
you've heard it once).


-- 
73 from Ian G3SEK          Editor, 'The VHF/UHF DX Book'
                           'In Practice' columnist for RadCom (RSGB)
                            http://www.ifwtech.com/g3sek