ok so ive been listening on HF for a few weeks now and i keep hearing and seeing all these weird codes and shortenings that i just dont understand. like QSL, QRM, QRZ, and then theres also stuff like 73 and 88 and DE and all that. is there like a master list somewhere or do people just kind of pick it up over time? i feel like everyone else just knows this stuff automatically and im sitting here googling every other thing i hear. also heard someone say QSB the other day and had no idea what was happening, thought maybe it was a callsign at first lol. im a tech class right now working on my general so maybe this gets covered more later but figured id just ask here

yeah theres definitely a learning curve with all of it but honestly you just absorb most of it after a while on the air. the Q codes go way back to before voice radio, telegraph operators used them so you could communicate across language barriers since QRM means interference whether you speak english or spanish or whatever. anyway the ones you really run into constantly are QSL which just means acknowledgment or confirmed, QRM is man-made interference like someone elses signal bleeding in, QRN is natural static and noise, QSB is fading which is why you were confused, the signal was probably going up and down. QRZ is who is calling me, youll hear that at the start of a pileup when a DX station is trying to figure out whos calling. 73 is just best regards, goes back forever, and 88 is love and kisses which you mostly hear between people who know each other well. DE just means from, so when you hear W1ABC DE K5XYZ it means K5XYZ is calling W1ABC. theres a full ITU Q code list you can find easy enough but honestly just spend some time in the ARRL handbook or even just lurking on a busy 20m frequency for a few afternoons and it starts clicking pretty fast

oh man i was in the exact same spot not that long ago. one thing that helped me was just keeping a little notepad next to the radio and writing down anything i didnt recognize and looking it up after the QSO. also QRN vs QRM tripped me up for the longest time, i kept mixing them up. the N is natural noise like lightning crashes and the M is man made, once i remembered that it stuck. also dont sleep on QRP, thats low power operation and youll see it everywhere especially on digital modes. some guys are super proud of their QRP setups haha