I don't know how it works in a non military air field, but I know for us on the C-5 when ever we are running on APU's we are supposed to give ground a call and let them know.
Well as a student I was doing the apu startup checklist, and I kept calling tower to request permission to start apu's. My instructor was laughing so hard he could not correct me
Tower finally came back with something witty.
And have given more than one pax brief over the whole planes PA