Tango Uniform

“Tango Uniform” translates to “toes up”, meaning “it’s dead”. This is a (very) old joke when anything non-human dies (usually a piece of electronic or mechanical equipment). So if you’ve ever heard someone say Tango Uniform, that’s what it means.

This is just a small example of what’s known as the NATO phonetic alphabet. Being that my father is an amateur radio operator, as a child I heard him speak in phonetics often when operating. Later on during my I.T. career I found knowing how to speak in phonetics invaluable. Why? Because when you’re in computer support you run across serial numbers all the time, and when speaking a serial no. over the phone it’s extremely unlikely the serial will be misunderstood if spoken phonetically.

Example: 327BDEP.

“B” sounds like “D” sounds like “E” sounds like “P”. Even with a crystal clear phone conversation the letters can be misunderstood. However if you say it as “Three Two Seven Bravo Delta Echo Papa”, nobody will misunderstand you.

How can you use phonetics? You can use them whenever you have to call technical support for anything that requires speaking a serial number of any kind. The rep speaking to you will genuinely appreciate it (I always did).

Additional tips when speaking numbers:

Over-pronounce the number five. State as “FIE-VUH”.

The number nine should be pronounced as “NYNE-ERR”.

Additional notes/trivia:

There is (or at least shouldn’t be) no such thing as the letter O in an alphanumeric serial number because it is too easily confused with the number 0.

The letters most people get wrong are Foxtrot (some say “fox”), November (some people make up a word), Uniform (not “unity”) and Victor (not “victory”).

The reason English language letters are used for all aircraft designations is because there are only 26 letters and it’s easy to remember.

The W used to be William but was changed to Whiskey because some people couldn’t pronounce it correctly (it would come out as “will-wimm”).

Old-school phonetic users remember when O was Opera and K was Kilowatt and M was Mexico.