so ive been licensed about two years now and for most of that time i was just doing local stuff and some casual HF but lately ive gotten really into DX and someone at my club mentioned i should look into DXCC and now im kind of obsessed with the idea but also completely confused by the whole system

like i understand the basic concept, work 100 entities and you get the award, but the credit submission part is where i get lost. do i need QSL cards for every single contact or can i use LoTW confirmations? and what about WAS and WAZ, are those totally separate programs you track independently or does some of the logging overlap? i have like 40-something entities confirmed on LoTW already from stuff i worked without even thinking about it and i didnt realize i could have been submitting credits this whole time

also someone mentioned mixed mode vs phone only vs digital only awards and now my head is spinning. any of you guys who have been through this process willing to give a basic rundown? im not looking for a shortcut just trying to understand how the machinery works before i really commit to chasing this seriously

yeah the award credit system threw me off too when i first started chasing seriously. short version is LoTW is absolutely the way to go for DXCC credits, you upload your logs, the other station uploads theirs, and when they match ARRL automatically counts it as a confirmed contact. you dont need paper QSLs at all for DXCC if both sides are on LoTW, which honestly covers a surprising amount of DX stations these days, even some pretty rare ones

WAS and WAZ are tracked completely separately. WAS is through ARRL too so LoTW handles that the same way, but WAZ is a CQ magazine award and you have to submit to them directly, different system entirely. your log data can be the same contacts but the submission process is different and CQ still leans more toward physical QSLs or their own online system last i checked

the mixed vs phone vs digital thing is just that once you hit 100 on mixed mode you can go after the phone-only or digital-only endorsements separately. most people start with mixed and then if they do a lot of SSB or FT8 they eventually rack up enough for the mode endorsements too. just keep logging everything and dont stress about which box it falls in yet, after a while it starts to make sense on its own

oh man i remember being exactly where you are, it felt overwhelming at first but once you just start submitting stuff and see the credits tick up it becomes kind of addicting honestly. one thing i wish somebody had told me early on is to make sure your LoTW certificate is set up correctly with the right callsign and the right dates, i had a mismatch early on and lost credit for like a dozen contacts that never matched properly

also dont sleep on the lower bands for chasing new entities, 40 and 80 meters at the right time of day opens up stuff that 20 meters never will. thats kind of how i got hooked, stayed up late one night and worked a station in the Indian Ocean on 40 that i never would have caught otherwise