Amateur Radio
Selected Q codes were soon adopted by amateur radio operators. In December, 1915, the American Radio Relay League began publication of a magazine titled QST, named after the Q code for "General call to all stations". In amateur radio, the Q codes were originally used in Morse code transmissions to shorten lengthy phrases and were followed by a Morse code question mark (··--··) if the phrase was a question.
Q codes are commonly used in voice communications as shorthand nouns, verbs, and adjectives making up phrases. For example, an amateur radio operator will complain about QRM (man-made interference), or tell another operator that there is "QSB on the signal"; "to QSY" is to change your operating frequency.
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Famous quotes containing the words amateur and/or radio:
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—Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)
“Now they can do the radio in so many languages that nobody any longer dreams of a single language, and there should not any longer be dreams of conquest because the globe is all one, anybody can hear everything and everybody can hear the same thing, so what is the use of conquering.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)