Radio terms - help with words used.

[flying dog]

If/when you ask/call for a radio check, the usual reply is "Loud and Clear".

 

But what are the words allowed for the reply.

Loud, quiet, (what?)

 

Clear, Broken, Noisy, (and?)

 

Yeah, they may be listed somewhere, but I thought I'd ask here.

 

Someone?

 

[FlyBoy1960]

There actually are standard words for this, depending on whether you’re talking military, aviation, or general radio procedure.

The typical format is a two-part assessment:

1. Strength (how loud the signal is)

2. Readability (how clear the speech is)

1. Signal Strength (first word)

• Loud – very strong signal

• Good – strong, but not excessive

• Weak – signal is faint

• Very weak – barely readable

• Fading – signal strength varies

2. Readability (second word)

• Clear – perfectly understandable

• Readable – understandable without difficulty

• Unreadable – cannot be understood

• Distorted – signal warped, hard to understand

• With interference / noisy – background noise present but copyable

• Broken – speech cutting in and out

So, examples you’ll hear are:

• “Loud and clear” (the gold standard)

• “Weak but readable”

• “Good but with interference”

• “Unreadable”

Aviation / military shorthand

In NATO and ICAO radiotelephony, there’s also the “Readability Scale” (1–5):

• 1 – Unreadable

• 2 – Readable now and then

• 3 – Readable with difficulty

• 4 – Readable

• 5 – Perfectly readable

So a pilot might just say “Read you five” instead of “Loud and clear.”

[flying dog]

Thanks very much for that.

 

I couldn't find the words when posting, but you (luckily) found the ones I was missing and answered the question.

 

🙂

 

[facthunter]

 Best used to be 5 by 5.   Scale 1 to 5.  Nev

[BurnieM]

Loud and clear came about people got confused with '5 by 5' or '5 by 9' none of which is that complicated.

 

I recommend you only use 'loud and clear' or a short plain language description ie "muffled", "understandable but lot of background noise"(borderline too long), "weak but clear" etc

 

Edited 17 hours ago by BurnieM