so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i keep hearing people throw around all these codes on the air and i have no idea what half of them mean. like i know QTH is location and QSL is like confirming the contact but then someone said QRM to me and i had to just kind of nod along and pretend i understood. and theres also stuff like 73 which i know is goodbye basically but then someone said 88 to a lady on the repeater and i didnt know if that was rude or not lol. is there like a go-to list somewhere or do people just kind of pick this up over time? also whats the difference between using Q codes on phone vs CW because it seems like people use them differently depending on the mode

QRM is interference from other stations, like man-made noise, versus QRN which is natural static like from a thunderstorm. easy way i remember it is QRM = man, QRN = nature. you'll also hear QSB a lot which is when your signal is fading in and out, and QRZ meaning someone is calling you or asking who's there. 73 is just the traditional sign-off, means best regards basically, goes back to telegraph days. 88 means love and kisses so yeah that one is specifically used between friends or for the ladies, totally normal in ham tradition though some folks dont use it anymore. honestly just keep a cheat sheet by your radio for a while, i had one taped to my desk for like a year when i started and thats nothing to be ashamed of. the ARRL website has a full list and so does the back of most license study books.

yeah on CW people use Q codes way more liberally because youre trying to save keystrokes basically, like you'd never type out the whole word when there's a code for it. on phone (voice) its more mixed, some old timers use them constantly out of habit and others barely touch them. one that trips people up is QRP which technically means reduce power but in common usage everyone just says it to mean low power operating in general, like under 5 watts. and then theres QRO which is the opposite, running high power. also QRT means shutting down or going off the air. i remember being confused about QRZ specifically because it sounds like it should mean something about the letter Z but nope, just means whos calling or whos there. give it a few more months on the air and itll start clicking naturally