Originally Posted by
212man
Seems pretentious to me. What you put in a flight plan isn’t necessarily what you say in RT. You wouldn’t say Bravo 737 - you’d say Boeing 737. So why not just say Eurocopter (or Airbus) 145 to ATC, and write EC45 in the flight plan? Similarly Sikorsky S76 rather than Sierra Kilo seven six!
In the US, you identify yourself to ATC as "helicopter" followed by the N number. If you are asked the type helicopter (and I have been, many times) you reply with the proper aircraft type designator, which is often different than the model. In this case, it is EC45. It's not being pretentious and has nothing to do with the phonetic alphabet. It is the information they are asking for as that is how an aircraft is listed in their database. casper64 is correct. Why a pilot would give the type designator without being prompted for it by ATC, I don't know.
https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/...tors_FINAL.pdf