Two vocabularies, and nobody tells you which is which
Your first few weeks on the air, the hard part isn’t working the radio. It’s that everyone around you is talking in shorthand and none of them stop to explain it. Someone asks your QTH, tells you you’re full quieting, and mentions the SFI is finally back up — and you say something agreeable and go look it up afterward.
There are two separate vocabularies doing that to you, and this page keeps them apart.
Q codes are the three-letter ones, and they’re older than amateur radio itself. QTH is your location. QSY means change frequency. QRM is interference from another station. There are dozens, but you’ll hear the same fifteen or twenty over and over.
Everything else is in the second table — the labels stamped on your radio’s buttons, the connector on the end of your coax, the propagation numbers worth checking before you bother calling CQ on twenty meters.
You don’t need to memorize either list. Bookmark the page, look things up when they go past you, and the ones you actually use will stick without any effort. If you’d rather have something at the radio, there’s a printable Q code sheet at the top of this page.
If what you heard was a phrase rather than an abbreviation — kerchunk, full quieting, ragchew — that’s in the on-air glossary. For the concepts behind the gear, what a band is and why SWR matters, start with the terminology guide.
The ones you'll hear first
QTH your location
QSY change frequency
QSL I acknowledge receipt
QRM interference from another station
QRN static or atmospheric noise
QSB your signal is fading
QRZ who is calling me?
QRT I’m shutting down the station
All thirty-six are in the table below, with the question each one asks and the answer that goes with it.