Ham Radio Alphabet
The A-B-C Of It!

The ham radio alphabet is often essential to reliable voice communications between ham radio operators.

As a bonus, I have included the abbreviations and acronyms that you will eventually use, at some time or other, in your discovery and daily practice of the amateur radio hobby.

The Phonetic Alphabet

The phonetic alphabet was devised to make voice communication intelligible under less than favorable conditions. In English, it is often hard to tell "s" from "f", "d" from "b" or "p", etc.

The ham radio community, by international agreement, has adopted the ICAO (see acronyms below) standard phonetic alphabet.

Thus, whenever I want to make sure that my call sign is understood correctly, I will voice it like this:

"Victor Echo 2 Delta Papa Echo" instead of spelling VE2DPE!

The Abbreviations - A to Z

Amateur radio operators mainly use "Q" codes as abbreviations (see other page on ham radio codes).

When we communicate in morse code (CW), we make heavy use of abbreviations.

Here are a few examples of some of the most common abbreviations you will hear on the ham radio bands (assuming you can "read" morse code ;-).

• ANT - antenna
• BK - break
• BTW - by the way
• CFM - confirm
• FB - fine business (good, excellent)
• GA - go ahead, good afternoon
• 73 - best regards

The Acronyms - A to Z

Any specialized field of activity, such as ham radio, has its acronyms.

Here are a few examples of acronyms part of the ham radio alphabet "soup":-)

• ARES - Amateur Radio Emergency Service
• APRS - Automatic Position Reporting System
• ATV - Amateur television (fast scan)
• IARU - International Amateur Radio Union
• OSCAR - Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio
• RTTY - Radio-teletype
• SSTV - Slow-scan amateur television
• TAPR - Tucson Amateur Packet Radio
• TNC - Terminal Node Controller (Amateur Packet Radio)

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