so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i keep hearing people on HF use all these abbreviations and codes and i honestly have no idea what half of them mean. like i know QSL is for confirming contact and QTH is your location but thats about it. someone said QRM to me the other day and i just kind of said yeah and moved on hoping they wouldnt notice i had no clue what they were talking about.

is there like a standard list somewhere or do people just kind of pick these up over time? also whats the difference between Q codes and just regular ham abbreviations because i see stuff like 73 and 88 which dont start with Q but seem to mean something specific too. feels like theres a whole second language i missed out on when i got my license

haha yeah the Q code thing trips up a lot of new hams, dont worry about it. they actually go back to like the early telegraph days before voice radio was even a thing, so theres a ton of them and most active ops only use maybe a dozen regularly anyway.

the ones youll hear most on HF phone are QRM which is man-made interference, like if someones transmitting on your frequency or close to it. QRN is natural static and noise, like lightning crashes. QSB is when your signal is fading in and out, which happens a lot on HF with propagation changes. QRP means low power, youll hear people say theyre running QRP when theyre on 5 watts or less. QRZ is basically asking whos calling, youll hear people say QRZ at the end of a CQ when theyre listening for replies.

the ARRL website has a full list and so does the back of most log books. but honestly you just pick most of them up from listening. after a few months of HF time they start to feel pretty natural. 73 by the way just means best regards, its the most common one you'll hear at the end of any contact

88 means love and kisses lol, you mostly hear that one on 2m between people who know each other well. kind of a thing mostly between couples on the radio which is either cute or cringe depending on who you ask.

one thing that confused me when i started was QSY, which just means change frequency. so if someone says lets QSY up 10 they want to move the contact 10 khz up. seemed obvious in hindsight but i had no idea for the longest time and just follwed whoever i was talking to without really understanding why we were moving