so ive been listening on HF for a few weeks now and people throw around all these abbreviated things constantly and i cant keep up. like QSL, QRM, QSY, QTH... i know QSL is like confirming a contact i think? but the others im totally lost on. and its not just Q codes either, people say 73 and i figured out thats like goodbye but then theres 88 which i only just heard for the first time yesterday and had no idea what that was.

is there like a standard list somewhere or do you just kind of pick these up over time. also do people actually use all of them or just a handful regularly. seems like there must be hundreds of Q codes if you look them up but i never hear most of them on the air

yeah you pretty much just pick them up over time honestly. the ones you listed are the main ones most people use day to day. QTH is your location, QRM is interference from other stations (as opposed to QRN which is natural noise like lightning), QSY means you're moving to a different frequency, and QRZ is "who is calling me" which you hear a lot when someone cant quite copy a callsign.

the 73 thing is just traditional signoff, means best regards basically, goes back to the old telegraph days. 88 is "love and kisses" which some people use but honestly i only hear it between friends or on the rare occasion someone's talking to their wife on the air. there's also 55 which is supposed to mean good luck but i almost never hear that one used.

realistically you probably only need to know maybe 20 or so Q codes to follow most conversations. QSB is fading signal, QSL is confirmed, QRP means low power operation (like 5 watts or less), QRO is the opposite. ARRL has a reference card you can print out and most logbook software lists them too. after a month or two of listening you wont even think about it

88 got me too when i first started lol. someone said it to me on 40m and i had absolutely no clue what they meant, had to go look it up and felt kinda awkward in retrospect haha. the Q codes do click eventually though dont stress it too much