Foundation Licence - Q - code

Effective communication by telegraphy implies the use of internationally agreed symbols and abbreviations so that difficulties arising from language differences are eliminated to a fairly large extent. An entire contact can take place on telegraphy between two people who share no common language by use of these codes and the standard procedural characters.

At the Foundation Licence level you are NOT required to know this code, and will not be assessed on it. It is provided here as extra information useful to you because of its endemic use in amateur radio related conversation as well as contacts both by phone and telegraphy.

The symbols and abbreviations used in amateur radio are based on the international Q-code and the procedures used in marine and commercial radio telegraphy. Many other abbreviations are based on phonetic English.

The international Q-code is a series of questions and answers, and the Q-signals in Table 1, which are taken from the official list, are commonly used in the amateur service. Amateurs use many of the Q-signals as nouns as well as in question-and-answer form (see Table 2). 

Table 1 - International Q-Code (Extract)

 Table 2 Use of Q-Codes as nouns