so ive been licensed about 3 years now and mostly just did local stuff and some casual HF but lately ive been getting really into DX and honestly the DXCC thing has kind of taken over my brain a little. right now im sitting at 87 confirmed on Logbook of the World and another 20 or so that ive worked but havent confirmed yet, waiting on QSL cards from a couple of them.

my question is sort of about strategy i guess. does it make more sense to focus on getting to 100 confirmed first before worrying about anything else, or should i start thinking about WAS and WAZ at the same time? i feel like chasing all three at once would be chaotic but i dont want to miss opportunities either. some of the rarer ones obviously count for DXCC and maybe WAZ at the same time so it seems like theres overlap.

also — for DXCC specifically, do QSOs on different bands all count toward the basic 100 or do they have to be on different entities? im a little fuzzy on how the whole credit system works when you work the same entity on multiple bands. like ive worked Japan probably 15 times on different bands, does that just count as one entity toward the basic award?

sorry if this is a basic question, ive read the ARRL rules page but it kind of made my head spin a bit.

yeah Japan only counts once for the basic DXCC — its one entity regardless of how many bands or modes you work them on. the 100 entities is just 100 different countries/entities confirmed, doesnt matter how many times you've worked each one. where bands start to matter is for the band-specific endorsements, like 5BDXCC where you need 100 entities confirmed on each of five bands separately. that gets expensive in terms of time and postage if youre still doing paper QSLs lol.

as for doing DXCC, WAS and WAZ at the same time — honestly most people just kind of naturally work toward all of them simultaneously without really thinking about it too hard. if youre on 20m calling CQ or working pileups youre gonna rack up states, zones and entities all at once. WAS is probably the easiest of the three to finish if youre in the lower 48, most guys knock that out without even trying that hard. WAZ takes more deliberate effort especially for some of the rarer zones. id say just work everything you can hear and sort it out later, LoTW makes tracking pretty painless these days compared to the old card binder days.

Welcome to the rabbit hole, there is no escape haha. I was in the same spot about two years ago and now I have a spreadsheet that my wife thinks is deeply unhinged.

One thing I'd add that nobody told me early on — dont sleep on getting your LoTW confirmations sorted for the ones you already have. I had like 30 QSOs sitting unconfirmed for months just because I hadnt uploaded my log properly. Also some DXpeditions upload to LoTW way faster than others, some take literally a year or more so dont panic if stuff doesnt show up right away.

For WAZ specifically, zone 3 and some of the pacific zones can be tricky depending on where you're located and what antennas you're running. whats your setup like? that makes a big difference in how aggressively you can chase the rarer ones.