ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about DXCC and WAS and WAZ and honestly im starting to feel like i need a spreadsheet just to keep track of what any of it means. from what i can tell DXCC is about working 100 countries (entities i guess they call them), WAS is working all 50 states, and WAZ is zones? but like how many zones are there even and how do you know what zone youre in vs what zone youre working into.

anyway my real question is just — for someone running about 100 watts into a dipole in a suburban backyard, is there a logical order to go after these? like should i even bother thinking about DXCC until i have WAS done or does it not matter. ive been logging with WSJT-X on FT8 mostly and i think im up to like 38 states and maybe 60-something entities but i have no idea if any of those actually count toward anything official until i go through the confirmation process which also confuses me a bit with LoTW vs paper QSL cards.

sorry for the long post, just trying to figure out how this whole award chasing thing actually works before i start spending money on confirmations i might not need

Welcome to the rabbit hole haha. So the short answer is there's no required order, you can chase all three at the same time and honestly with FT8 you probably already have more progress than you realize. WAZ has 40 zones total based on the CQ zone system — you can look up a map and it starts to make sense pretty quick once you see it visually.

For what its worth i'd say get yourself signed up for LoTW if you havent already because a huge chunk of the confirmations you need for DXCC pretty much require it these days, especially for the rarer entities. A lot of DX stations only upload to LoTW and dont bother with paper cards anymore. Once you have an LoTW account your logs from WSJT-X can sync up and youll start seeing what you actually have confirmed vs just worked.

38 states on 100 watts into a dipole is solid for 8 months. WAS is definitely achievable from a suburban setup, just takes patience on the harder ones like Delaware and Rhode Island that dont pop up as often. Dont stress too much about the order, just keep logging and the credits add up faster than you think.

yeah what he said about LoTW — seriously just get that set up first before anything else. i waited way too long and had like a years worth of contacts that i had to go back and try to get confirmed through QRZ or eQSL which is hit or miss. the ARRL application process for LoTW is a little annoying with the certificate stuff but once its done its done and everything just kind of flows from there.

also 60 entities in 8 months on FT8 is not bad at all, you might actually be closer to DXCC than you think if you can get those confirmed. some of the entities are super easy to get but the last 10-15 to hit 100 confirmed can take a while depending on propagation and what DXpeditions are active. theres a site called DX Watch or you can use the DX cluster to see whos on and where