okay so ive been listening on HF for a few weeks now and i keep hearing and seeing all these weird shorthand things and i honestly have no idea what half of them mean. like QSL i kind of get from context but then theres QRM, QRN, QSB, QRZ and a bunch others and people just throw them around like everyone knows what they are. also saw someone type 73 at the end of a message and wasnt sure if that was like a frequency or something? and whats the deal with OM and YL, is that like a callsign thing or what. i tried googling some of it but different sites say slightly different things and some of it seems like old morse code stuff that people still use for some reason. anyway just trying to get a handle on the basics before i try to actually get on air

ha yeah the Q codes can be a lot at first. so they go back to the old telegraphy days, like way before voice was even a thing, and operators needed short ways to say common stuff over CW without tapping out whole sentences. QRM means interference from other stations, QRN is natural static and noise, QSB is when your signal is fading in and out, and QRZ is basically asking who's calling or who's there. QSL just means confirmed or acknowledged, yeah you got it right. the 73 thing is just a traditional sign off meaning best regards, no idea why 73 specifically, its just always been that way. OM means Old Man which sounds rude but its just how hams say fellow operator or buddy, doesnt matter how old you actually are. YL is Young Lady and thats what you call a female ham, XYL is ex-young-lady meaning wife. i know some folks take issue with the YL/XYL thing these days but its pretty ingrained in the hobby. theres a whole list of Q codes, probably like a hundred of them, but honestly most people only ever use maybe 15 or 20 regularly so dont worry about memorizing all of them

was in the same boat not that long ago tbh. one thing that helped me was just keeping a little cheat sheet open on my second monitor while i was listening. after a while you just kinda absorb them. QRN drove me nuts for like two weeks because i kept thinking it meant the same as QRM but they really are different things once you start noticing it. also 88 means love and kisses which you mostly hear people say to their wives or whatever on the radio, kind of funny the first time you hear it. oh and de just means from in CW, like W1ABC de K5XYZ means youre hearing K5XYZ calling W1ABC. once you get a few of them down the rest start making more sense i think