tree-fife-niner
 

How do you ladies and gents say "359" over the radio:

A. tree-fife-niner

B. three-five-niner (this is what I do)

C. three-five-nine

For some reason, I just can't seem to bring myself to naturally say "tree" or "fife". Is it accepted and legal to not do this? Thanks.

Depends what's more important - your vanity, or your need to be understood.

I round it up to 360 :E

What is Kay-beck? The letter "Q"?

Tree Fife Niner, Keebek.

There's the right way as published by ICAO, and lots of other ways.

I like doing it the ICAO way, it's just part of the fun arcane nature of aviation.

I did get corrected on "tree" the other day by a stupid and analy retentive air trafficer at a certain airfield near Milton Keynes :ugh: Okay, "three" may be fine between native English speakers on correct RT, but it's still technically incorrect and you don't correct people for not using it.

G

Here in the US, especially in cities, we generally say:

ATC: "Cactus 1234, please say airspeed"

Cactus 1234: "Yo homes, I dun be at uh twee fife nine-ah knots on my rope, you hear what I'm sayin' yo, peace?"

North ..........

A perfect example of why correct phraseology is so important - those all-too-common cases where neither the pilot nor controller has English as a first language.

G :E

stop, I'm laughing my socks off. :rolleyes:

From long (and occasional unhappy) experience:

Three has the potential to be mistaken for "two" (and vice versa).

"Tree" is correct, sounds somewhat dorky, and IMO the most important annunciation to prevent confusion is the "ee" sound. Likewise with "two" the "oo" sound should be clear.

Not that I'm actually suggesting a personal variance to the standard; what I'm suggesting is to learn why the standard is the way it is. Understand what is behind the rules, and you understand why they should be followed and where they might be not quite adequate, in rare cases.

Five and nine are regularly confused if not pronounced correctly. The ICAO pronunciation should always be used with these two.

Yeah, "qwee-beck" can be awkward to say. You can also try this phonetic alphabet, to get around some of those pesky ICAO words:

A Aileen (eye—lene)
B Boxtop (box—top)
C Cesium (seas—c—um)
D Dung (dung)
E Eugene (you—jean)
F Felt (felt)
G Greco (greco)
H Hanky (hanky)
I Ixtapa (icks—tapa)
J Julio (who’-li—o)
K Knarly (narl—lee)
L Linoleum (lin—o—lee—um)
M Mango (mang—go)
N Naught (not)
O Oleo (o—lee—o)
P Panky (panky)
Q Qualm (cwalm)
R Richter (rick—ter)
S September (sept—em—ber)
T Tike (tike)
U Unite (you—night) :
V Vacuform (vac—you—form)
W Wolf (wolf)
X Xylene (zie—lean)
Y Yuppy (yuppy)
Z Zinger (zinger)

I have taken to rolling the final R in niner (and elesewhere), the way I think it is done colloquially in Scotland. After all it was added by ICAO for the sake of unambiguity so I can best make it stand out. Never got any comments.
As for "tree" versus "three", I have never used a radio that allowed hearing the difference.

Agreed with with Genghis that it is NOT done to correct people on their pronounciation, except where absoltutely necessary for the clarity of communications. Wasn't it a basic principle to keep the frequency as unoccupied as possible?

And while we're on the subject of non-native speakers: French and Italians are quite easily picked out by their accent, no need for cues - and if you hear someone pronouncing "zero" as "see-row" you can bet he's Dutch.

"see-row" would be fairly normal in spoken British English, it's just still incorrect RT.

G

I started out using tree fife niner - and felt a bit of a twit as nobody else seemed to bother.

Then switching frequencies one day

contact x on 3xx.0

Read back

contact x on 3xx.0

Negative I say again contact x on 3xx.0

and so it went on, until I read back

contact x on tree xx.0

Stick with it perhaps it will catch on, it's no more daft to do things properly with your RT than it is to plan properly. Good RT, and just as importantly good pronunciation gets you places. When you hear it done right btw it sounds so much more professional, it's easy to pick that pilot out from the rest of the eers and waffle.

There's a London Sector controller who loves his "see-rows"

Still makes me laugh after all these years.

PPL's trying too hard also make me inwardly laugh. As is evident from this thread:}

Funny, I was thinking about this only the other day, when I heard ATC use "day-see-mal" for the first time (not that he used it for the first time - I heard it for the first time).

Being a very low-hours PPL, and the skies of East Anglia not being massively crowded, I've obviously not got a lot of RT under my belt as yet, but I have to say that virtually all the RT I've heard to date has been in plain English, other than "fife" and "niner".

SFCC

"PPLs trying too hard . . . ."

What, doing what they have been taught to do and say?

My apologies for flying in the same skies which you so clearly own.

Occasionally, particularly with Southern English accents, 'too' and 'tree' are indistinguishable. For that reason I never say 'tree', indeed I think it would be better pronounced 'free'. 'Fife' is superfluous, 'niner' I do say but not all the time. A lot of this has to do with a time when radios were not as good as they are now, or with e.g. HF communications. In reality you can just carry out a normal conversation and everyone will know what you're saying.

"Twee" seems to work better than "tree". Maybe better than "free", too.

At least you merely sound a bit froo froo, saying twee, rather than three years old, saying free.:}

When I started out 359 was ....

...-- ..... ----.

Seriously...and as an ex comms instructor.

It depends on the comms environment...the harder/more confusing/poorer the comms conditions, the greater the need for technical precision. It also depends on your knowledge and experience to know what matters and what doesn't.

Others will disagree, but I never used "tree" or "fife" either (although I always used "niner"....weird isn't it??)