ok so ive been listening to a lot of HF lately and people are throwing around all these abbreviations and i can only pick up like half of what's being said. i know QSL means like acknowledgment or something and QTH is your location but then someone said QRM to me and i had no idea what they wanted. also whats the difference between 73 and 88, i see both in logbooks at the club and nobody really explained it to me properly. is there like a master list somewhere or do you just kind of pick it up over time. also heard someone say QSY during a net and figured out from context they were changing frequency but wasnt sure if that was the right interpretation. just feels like theres a whole other language going on and im missing half the words

yeah QRM is interference from other stations, like man-made noise, whereas QRN is natural static like from lightning or whatever. easy way i remember it is QRM = Man-made. QSY you got right, that's moving to another frequency. there's a pretty decent list on the ARRL site but honestly the ones you'll use day to day are maybe 15-20 of them. QSL, QTH, QRM, QRN, QRZ (who's calling me), QSB (fading signal), QRP (low power), and a few others. 73 is just the standard sign-off, means best regards basically, been used since telegraph days. 88 is specifically love and kisses and is traditionally sent to women, though you see it used all kinds of ways now. you'll pick it up fast once you start actually transmitting, promise

im in the same boat as you honestly, only been licensed about 4 months. what helped me was just keeping a little cheat sheet next to my radio for the first few weeks. QRZ always threw me off because it sounds like it should mean something else but its just someone asking whos calling them, usually the DX station running a pileup. the other one that got me was QSK which is full break-in CW, didnt even know what break-in meant at the time lol. just keep listening and it clicks eventually