ok so ive been listening on HF for a few weeks now with my new technician ticket and people are throwing around all these weird codes and abbreviations and i cant figure out half of them. like what is QRM vs QRN, i see those a lot. and what does 73 mean, somebody explained it once but i forgot. also people say things like QSL and QTH all the time.

is there a list somewhere or do you just pick these up over time? i tried googling but i get like wikipedia pages that list hundreds of them and most of them nobody actually uses so i dont know which ones to bother learning

yeah the wikipedia list is overwhelming, most of those codes havent been used since morse code was how everyone communicated and a lot of them are pretty obscure maritime stuff that crossed over into ham radio back in the day. in practice you really only need maybe a dozen or so to get by day to day.

the ones you mentioned -- QRM is interference from other stations, like someone transmitting on or near your frequency. QRN is natural static, so like lightning crashes and atmospheric noise. QTH is your location, people will ask QTH? meaning wheres your location. QSL means acknowledged or confirmed, and its also used for those cards people mail each other to confirm contacts. 73 is just best regards or good wishes, its been around since early telegraph days and stuck around. you'll also hear QRZ which means whos calling me, and QSO which is just a contact or conversation. those honestly cover like 90% of what you'll hear in casual HF operation.

the other abbreviations you'll run into -- stuff like OM (old man, just means any male ham), YL (young lady, any female ham regardless of age lol), and ES which is just shorthand for and -- those come from CW culture and people still use them even in voice sometimes. just listen for a while and context usually makes it obvious what people mean.

73 is the one that always trips new people up because it sounds like it should mean something specific but its just a general goodbye/goodwill thing, nobody really knows the exact origin but its been used forever. some people say 88 which means love and kisses, usually said to a YL but honestly some people use it just as a friendly thing too, depends on the person.

one thing i'd add is that on digital modes like FT8 people use even more shorthand and the software handles a lot of it automatically so dont worry too much about memorizing everything at once. you'll pick it up