Pardon me, m'aam...QRL?

Since we just celebrated our anniversary, you can imagine there was a lot of "do you remember" moments in my home recently.

One incident that usually brings chuckles comes from early in our courtship when I met Lisa for lunch at a fast food eatery near campus. In a suave voice,  my opening line was "Pardon me,  m'aam, is this seat taken?" as I greeted her.

Cringe.

For some reasons, still unevident to me all these years later, she was not impressed by the line.  To me, it was more or less innocuous. She suggests it played into the stereotype of me not being very bright. 

Whereas we can debate the merits of my intro--and we have--one subtext that has surprised me is this: Lisa says I should have told her, instead, that I was a licensed ham radio operator. She says she would have been impressed by that fact.

So, to summarize, my line SHOULD have been, "Pardon me, m'aam. QRL?"

Ham radio operators sending morse code have developed a list of "Q" codes - a sort of shorthand that asks a question or conveys a message. 

For the example I mentioned above, QRL means, in essence "Is this seat taken?" Or more accurately from the ham radio world, "Is this frequency in use?" In ham radio etiquette an operator ought to send "QRL?" to make sure there isn't another station already operating on a particular frequency before they set up there for the day.

Or, related, if a ham radio operator knows there is another station present, they might ask "QRZ?" That means: who is calling me? (OR simply "Who are you?").

I won't take up too much time listing all of the Q codes. You could read them for yourself here. But some of the ones we frequently use are:

• QRM - Human interference
• QRN - Static
• QRS - Send more slowly
• QSB - Fading signals
• QTH - Location

And, of course, we covered QSO and QSL last week.

Q-Signals are just a fun part of the ham radio lingo just as many other pursuits have their own. For instance, I learned new vocab during my baseball coaching years. And when Paul was thick into his high school (and college) theater pursuits, there was another lexicon to master.

Apart from the Q codes, there is some other interesting ham radio slang I can introduce at another time.

For now, I am just re-thinking my opening line and realizing a Q-code might have helped me earn some bonus points!

JG