Not particularly germane to this discussion, but KIYK is a non-tower
airport. I was up doing bumps and rounds, AKA touch-n-goes yesterday, and
was dutifully calling out my various positions as any good airman in the
pattern should do.

Now, I was calling the runway as 02, like in "....33Xray, turning left base,
runway Zero-Two, Inyokern." Over the radio comes a voice to admonish me
that, "...there is no zero in front of the two." Never wanting to rankle a
fellow pilot, I dropped the zero -- well, most of the time, anyway.
Thirty-year-old habits are hard to break.

Does it matter? Is there a protocol for this?