so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i mostly just listen on the local repeater and occasionally key up but every time i try to follow along with a QSO or read posts on here people are throwing around all these abbreviations and i can only figure out like half of them from context. like i know QSL means confirmed or like an acknowledgement card and QTH is your location but then someone will say QRM or QSB and i have no clue. and its not just Q codes either, people say 73 and 88 and OM and YL and i kind of pieced together that 73 is like goodbye but is there a full list somewhere or do people just pick these up over time. also is there a difference between when you use them on CW vs voice because i feel like on the repeater people say them out loud which seems weird if they were originally morse code things

yeah totally normal to be confused at first, there's a lot of them and nobody really sits you down and explains it all. the Q codes go back to maritime and early radio telegraphy, way before ham radio was even a thing, so yeah they were designed for CW but people just started saying them out loud on phone too and it stuck. QRM is interference from other stations, like man-made noise, whereas QRN is natural static like from a thunderstorm. QSB is when your signal is fading in and out, you'll hear ops say "you're QSB" meaning your signal keeps dropping. QRP means low power operation, like 5 watts or less, and QRO is the opposite running high power. QRZ is who is calling me, so when someone says QRZ at the end of a transmission they're asking if anyone else is trying to reach them. there's honestly dozens more but those are the ones you'll hear constantly. for 73 yeah its just a friendly goodbye, comes from old telegraph days too. 88 is hugs and kisses, usually only sent to or from a YL which is a young lady, or really just any female operator. OM is old man which sounds rude but its just what everyone calls each other, doesnt matter your age. your local club probably has a cheat sheet if you ask around

i keep a little printed card taped near my rig with the most common ones, made it myself when i was starting out. honestly after a few months on the air you just absorb most of them without even trying. QTH, QSL, QRM those'll be second nature pretty quick. one that tripped me up for a while was QSY, thats when someone says lets move to a different frequency. and QRX means standby or wait a minute basically. dont worry too much about memorizing them all upfront, just look em up when you hear a new one and it sticks pretty fast that way