ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and ive been making contacts pretty regularly, mostly on 40m and some on 20m when conditions are decent. my elmer told me i should be uploading my logs to LoTW but then someone at the club meeting mentioned eQSL and i honestly dont know the difference or why id use one over the other or both or whatever

also i still get actual paper QSL cards in the mail sometimes and those are really cool but i have no idea if i need to send cards back to everyone or just the ones who send me one first or what the etiquette is there. i did sign up for LoTW a while back but the whole TQSL thing kind of confused me and i never actually uploaded anything yet

basically just trying to figure out what the normal workflow is here. do most people do all three? is one more accepted than the others for awards and stuff? sorry if this is a dumb question, just trying to not be that guy who doesnt confirm contacts

not a dumb question at all, this stuff confused me for probably my first two years on the air honestly. so the short version is LoTW is run by the ARRL and it's what most people use for DXCC credit — it's the gold standard for awards if you care about that kind of thing. the whole TQSL setup is annoying at first but once you get your certificate loaded and figure out how to sign your ADIF files it becomes pretty routine, just takes a few minutes after a contest or a good DX session

eQSL is more casual and a lot of people use it but it doesnt count for DXCC unless they're in the authenticity guaranteed program, which not everyone is. that said i still use it because some guys only do eQSL and it's nice to have the digital card to look at

paper cards are kind of a tradition and some people really love them. i always send one back if i get one, just feels like the right thing to do. you can use the bureau through your national society if you dont want to pay direct postage for every card, saves a ton of money especially for DX

yeah what he said about TQSL, i put off setting it up for like six months and then it took me maybe 20 minutes once i just sat down and did it. the ARRL has a pretty decent walkthrough on their site. main thing is you request the certificate, they mail you a postcard with a code, you enter that and you're good. then you just export your log as ADIF and sign it through TQSL before uploading

one thing i'll add — some logging software like Log4OM or WSJT-X can upload to LoTW automatically or semi-automatically which is really nice once its configured. saves a lot of manual steps. i do FT8 mostly and having it just handle confirmations in the background is great