Is NATO alphabet a new name for the ICAO International Civil Aviation Organisation?
73,
Guru
Well itās not new to me Guru, but there again I was never a pilot. 
1 Like
According to Wikipedia, itās possibly ānewā as of the late 1950s.
Sounds a bit like the interchangeability of UTC, GMT and Zulu time.
Paul
2 Likes
Thanks guys for the info. I had never heard the NATO alphabet expression until a few days ago and again today, thatās why I asked the question.
However, Iāll keep using ICAO, as itās what I learnt when I prepared for my first ham licence exam back in 1983.
As my daughters like to remind me, Iām from the 60āsā¦
73,
Guru
2 Likes
Sorry Paul,
They might be interchangeable in your province but not in the rest of the World. GMT is a local time zone for Englanders. UTC is the international civil time scale. All time zones are referenced to this The sooner we discard Zulu and Kilo and similar time names the better IMO. Letās keep it simple and use UTC for anateur radio. Buy a dual time watch order your mobile phone to display both.
73
Ron
VK3AFW
āZuluā is the one letter code for UTC from the military time zone list. These are standard for the military in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, and commonly used in other armed forces.
The letter time zones also show up in the ISO 8601 date/time format. Just this afternoon, I was writing some search indexing code that used āZā for the UTC time zone. We use that standard for archive file names so they sort in time order and are unambigious.
wunder
2 Likes
Fair point, Ron and maybe the missing word in my response is ācolloquialā or some variation thereof.
Like some reading this I grew up in the UK during an era when GMT was still king and UTC nascent. Zulu time is something Iāve picked up from living in Southern California given we have a large Marine Corp presence. So in my mind these (and I suspect others, rightly or wrongly) are all interchangeable terms for the same moment in time. If someone says Zulu time, I think UTC and if someone says UTC I might think GMT but all arrive at the same string of digits.
Similarly, whether Alpha, Bravo etc are NATO or ICAO terms seems secondary to me. I simply use them to convey a letter.
YMMVā¦
Paul
Also - āZā fits better in my logbook!
1 Like
You donāt have to worry about all these phonetics if you use CW!
Heh Hehā¦ !
1 Like
To be truthful, GMT (and BST) is still king. Hams and teccies might know what UTC is but 99.9% of the population have never heard of it. Those that you explain it to think that it is pretty damā pointless, and for the everyday life of the man in the street they are probably right.
With regard to phonetics, back in the 1950ās when I started SWL, quite a few of the local hams had served in front of radios during the war and used the phonetics that had been used in their squadrens or regiments: I well remember the first ham I ever heard, he used āGeorge three Mike Yoke Charlieā for his callsign. I learned my phonetics from him and his friends. As I see it, aircraft pilots are obliged to use the ICAO in the approved pronunciation, the military are obliged to use the NATO phonetics, the rest of us are free to use whatever works and the NATO phonetics are recommended, not mandated.
Is that the NATO, ICAO or āpredictiveā spelling Brian? 
1 Like
Nah, just a mild attack of brain fade!
Z time & GMT = All NATO used Z time on signals unless . The merchant service generally used the abbreviation GMT instead. The Radio Office clock was always kept on Z/GMT and an additional clock showed whatever Local Time you were usingā¦- . UTC was new to me when I became a ham.
As David/NĆDET says, I use āZā - it takes up less space!! 
UTC is an āatomicā time, referenced from an international collection of clocks, mainly Caesium based, which define TAI, āTemps Atomic Internationalā. TAI and UTC tick in SI seconds.
GMT is a mean solar time, defined by the Noon transit of the Sun at Greenwich. IMHO it doesnāt really exist - the Airey Transit Circle (the specified instrument for measuring GMT) isnāt in use nowadays.
GMT ticks in mean solar seconds, which are slowly getting longer as the Earthās rotation slows.
UTC is a fudge between TAI and GMT. It is adjusted with āleap secondsā so as to keep it within one second of GMT.
So UTC and GMT are not the same!
73 de M0PTB
3 Likes
And then there is āWest Coast timeā which lags any accepted time zoneā¦
1 Like
And on the Isle of Wight it feels like itās still 1953 
2 Likes
Thatās OK, the whole UK will feel like 1953 on Jan 1st when we go back on rations etc. That will show those EU wallahs that weāre back in control of our own sovereignty.
3 Likes
Gotta luv democracy
Thanks for that Pete. Iāll remember that and quote you next time Iām late. Sort of; āSorry Iām late but my clock was set on UTC, not GMTā sort of thing!
David 
Sorry Brian,
Apart from an island off the coast of France BST isnāt king or widely known. BS is understood but BST? GMT is known to a few outside of the UK but nowhere near 99.9%. 
Stay well.
73
Ron
VK3AFW