ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep seeing people mention LoTW and eQSL and also just regular paper cards and i honestly dont fully understand how all of this works together or if you even need all three. like do most people do all of them or just pick one?

i set up a LoTW account a few weeks ago and i think i uploaded my logs but i have no idea if i did it right because nothing shows up as confirmed yet. i went through the whole TQSL certificate thing which was kind of a pain but i got through it. eQSL i havent even touched yet.

and then paper cards — i joined the ARRL so i can use their buro i think? but i havnt actually sent any cards out yet. its a bit overwhelming honestly, like i just wanna know what the actual workflow is that most hams use day to day. do you upload after every qso or just batch it once in a while? any help appreciated, still figuring all this out

totally get the confusion, it tripped me up too when I first started. here's how I think about it — LoTW is the one that really counts for ARRL awards like DXCC and WAS, so that's the most important one to keep up with if you care about awards at all. I just batch upload my log every week or two through TQSL, takes like 2 minutes once you've done it a few times.

eQSL is kind of its own thing, some people swear by it especially for certain awards and it has a nice visual card thing going on, but a lot of serious DXers dont really bother with it. i do upload there too just because why not, but it's not my priority.

paper cards are honestly kind of a separate hobby within the hobby at this point lol. i still send them for special contacts — first DX, new country, something memorable — but i dont send one for every qso, that would be expensive and time consuming. the bureau is slow, like months slow, but its cheap. direct mail is faster but costs more obviously.

dont stress about doing all three for every contact. get LoTW working reliably first, thats the main thing.

yeah i was in the same boat not too long ago. one thing that helped me was just checking your LoTW account at arrl.org and looking under "your QSOs" after you upload — if the log went through you'll see them listed there, they just wont show as confirmed until the other person has uploaded their log too and the dates/frequencies match up. so it can take a while depending on who you worked.

also just a heads up if you worked any parks on the air or sota stations those guys are usually pretty good about uploading to LoTW quickly so those might confirm faster than random contacts.