ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about DXCC and WAS and WAZ and honestly im not totally sure i understand the difference or which one makes sense to start working toward. i got my general back in april and ive been making contacts on 20m mostly, got a pretty modest station — IC-7300 and a dipole up about 30 feet.

so from what i can tell WAS is working all 50 states which seems more achievable than chasing entities all over the world? and DXCC is 100 confirmed entities, WAZ is the 40 zones thing. but i dont really understand how the confirmations work now with LoTW. like do i just upload my log and the credits happen automatically or is there paperwork involved or what. also does it matter what band you submit for or is it all mixed together for the basic award.

someone at my local club said to just focus on WAS first since the entities will come naturally as you chase states anyway but i dunno, DX is kind of what got me excited about this hobby in the first place so maybe i should just go after DXCC. anyway any advice from people who have been through this would be great

honestly your club guy isnt wrong but i wouldnt overthink it — just work whatever sounds interesting and let the awards sort themselves out. that said LoTW really does make it easier than it used to be. you upload your ADIF log to LoTW, and when the other station has also uploaded their log and your QSO data matches, it confirms automatically. ARRL handles the credit counting on their end. for the basic DXCC Mixed award it doesnt matter what band, any band counts toward the same total until you start going for the per-band endorsements later.

WAS through LoTW works basically the same way. you can also submit paper QSLs for either award if you have cards but most people just do LoTW now. i will say that chasing states can be weirdly satisfying because you can actually see progress pretty fast on 20m, you'll knock out a bunch of common ones quickly and then start hunting for the hard ones like Delaware or Rhode Island which take forever for some reason. the DX will come too dont worry about it, even with a dipole at 30 feet youll be surprised what you can work on a good day

WAZ took me way longer than DXCC did, just a heads up. some of those zones are genuinely rare and you might wait a long time for an activation. zone 2 was the last one i needed and i sat on 39 zones for like two years. so if youre newer i'd probably start with WAS or DXCC mixed just to get the momentum going and understand how the whole confirmation system works before you get into zone chasing which can be kinda maddening