ok so ive been licensed about 3 years now and mostly just ragchewed and did some local nets but lately ive been getting really into DX and i think i want to actually go after DXCC properly. i have maybe 40-something countries confirmed in Logbook of the World already just from casual operating but never really paid attention to what counts and what doesnt.

the thing confusing me is all the different awards — theres DXCC obviously but then WAS and WAZ and i see people talk about chasing credits on all of them at once. is that something you do simultaneously or do most people focus on one first? also some of the entities i worked i didnt have the other station upload to LoTW and i dont know if i can still get those confirmed somehow. one was a pretty rare one too which is annoying.

any advice from people who have actually gone through this would be great, im running 100w into a dipole so not a powerhouse station but i seem to get out ok

welcome to the rabbit hole haha. honestly my advice is just focus on DXCC first since its kind of the big one and the others will fill in naturally as you work more stations. WAS is actually pretty easy to knock out if you spend a few weekends on it, especially during contests when all 50 states are on. WAZ takes a bit more patience depending on your location and which zones are hard to hear from where you are.

for the unconfirmed ones — if the other op isnt on LoTW you can try a traditional QSL card through the bureau or direct. some of the rarer ones respond to direct requests pretty quickly actually because they want to help people get the credit. just send an SASE or a couple dollars for return postage if its a DX station. its old school but it still works and ARRL accepts paper QSLs for DXCC credit too, you just gotta send them in for checking which has a small fee attached.

100w and a dipole is totally workable for DXCC honor roll eventually, takes longer but plenty of people have done it. propagation does a lot of the heavy lifting

same boat as you basically, im at like 87 confirmed on LoTW right now and been chasing for about 18 months. one thing i wish someone told me earlier is to actually check the DXCC entity list on the ARRL site before you get too excited about a contact — some places you think would count as separate entities dont, and some weird tiny islands you'd never guess DO count. caught me off guard a few times.

also get on the DX clusters and just watch for a while before you start calling. you learn a lot about how pileups work and when to call and when you're just wasting your time. i wasted so many calls early on not realizing the DX station was listening up 5 or whatever