Spell something
Type a word and read it out the way a pilot would.
Why these words and not others
B and D and P sound identical through static. So does M and N. The fix is not to shout louder, it is to say a whole word instead of a letter, and to pick words that sound nothing like each other: different vowels, different rhythms, different lengths.
Two of them are deliberately misspelled. Alfa has no ph, because in many languages ph is read as p. Juliett has two t's, because a French speaker would silence a single one. The alphabet was built for people who do not speak English, which is the same instinct as a hazard symbol.
Test yourself
Two words that are not English
Mayday comes from the French m'aidez, help me, chosen because it survives a bad radio. SOS was never short for save our souls: in morse it is nine even beats, ... --- ..., which no operator could mistake for anything else. Both are engineering decisions that came out sounding like words.
And Roger means R. In the older alphabet R was Roger, and R stood for received. The alphabet changed, R became Romeo, and pilots kept saying Roger anyway: a word that is the fossil of a code nobody uses.
Back to signals Learn morseWhere it comes from
B, D and P sound identical through static, and so do M and N. Shouting does not fix it; a whole word does. The words were tested on speakers of many languages, which is why Alfa has no ph and Juliett has two t's. It was built for people who do not speak English, the same instinct as a hazard symbol.
Try it away from the screen
Spell your surname down a bad phone line. Then try it again the ordinary way and count how many times you have to say 'S for sugar'.