Originally Posted by
ORAC
Many thanks. What I'm getting from this is that everyone has something formal in the format A1B23 where the first three are randomly assigned and the last two indicate an aircraft, and also something else in the format [word] [number] [number], which may be based on all kinds of things. It's not quite clear to me at what time either of those would be used. Almost all of the military communications traffic I've ever heard has been "knight four one" or "focus three eight," that sort of stuff, though it is very often in an American context.
(Oddly enough, "knight" probably isn't one I'd use in fictional writing, because it sounds too... you know... top gun?)