ok so ive been listening on 40m mostly and people throw around all these short codes and i can only figure out like half of them from context. like i know QSO is a contact and QSL is confirming it but then someone said something about QRM and QRN and i wasnt sure which was which. and whats the deal with 73 at the end of every conversation, is that just like goodbye or does it mean something specific

also saw someone write "de" before their callsign in a cw exchange i think and i get thats probably "from" but im not 100 percent sure. is there like a master list somewhere or do you just pick this stuff up over time. feels like learning a whole second language on top of the actual radio stuff

yeah its basically its own little language and honestly you do just pick most of it up over time. QRM is interference from other stations, like man made noise, and QRN is natural static like from thunderstorms. easy way i remember it is QRM = man, QRN = nature. not perfect but it works.

73 technically means "best regards" and goes back to the old telegraph days, theres a whole history behind the numbered codes from like the 1800s. 88 is another one you hear sometimes which means love and kisses, mostly used between friends or a husband and wife on the air. and yeah "de" is from, so if you hear W1ABC de K4XYZ that means K4XYZ is calling W1ABC. you'll see it in cw all the time and sometimes people use it in voice too just out of habit i guess.

arrl has a pretty solid list in their handbook and also on their website somewhere. once you start operating more it really does click fast.

QRZ is another one that trips people up, it means whos calling me or sometimes people use it at the end of a pileup call to mean next caller go ahead. technically the correct use is whos calling but youll hear it both ways and nobody really corrects anyone anymore lol

honestly just hang out on a net for a few weeks and youll absorb like 90 percent of the common ones without even trying