ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now, general class, and i keep hearing people throw around stuff like QSL, QTH, QRM and honestly i have no idea what half of them mean. i know QSL is like confirming a contact because everyone talks about QSL cards but beyond that im kinda lost. someone on 40m last week said my QSB was bad and i just said uh yeah thanks and moved on because i didnt want to sound dumb. is there like a master list somewhere or do people just memorize these over time? also what does 73 actually stand for, i know its goodbye but where did that come from

yeah the Q codes go back to like telegraph days, they were originally a shorthand so operators could communicate across language barriers which is why theyre still useful internationally. the ones you'll hear most on phone and cw are QTH (your location), QRM (interference from other stations, like manmade noise), QRN (static and natural noise), QSB (signal fading, which is probably what that guy meant), QRP (low power operation), QRZ (who is calling me), and QSY (change frequency). theres a full ITU list but honestly most hams only use maybe a dozen of them regularly. 73 is a whole other thing, it came from the old landline telegraph codes, 73 meant best regards and it just stuck around. some people say 88 too which means love and kisses, usually reserved for close friends or family. honestly the best way to learn is just spend time listening and things will click pretty fast, within a few months youll be throwing them around without thinking about it

QRZ is the one that tripped me up when i first started, i kept thinking it was some kind of question about signal quality but nope its basically just who is calling. now i use it all the time when i cant make out a callsign. the fading thing, QSB, yeah that gets mentioned a lot on 40 especially in the evenings when propagation gets weird. dont worry about not knowing them all right away, ive been licensed two years and still occasionally have to look one up