so ive been trying to get into DX chasing more seriously the last few months and someone at my club mentioned using the cluster spotting stuff on DXwatch alongside QRZ to look up stations before i call them. i kind of just stumbled into doing both at the same time and now im not sure if theres a better workflow or if people even bother with both or just stick to one.

what i've been doing is keeping DXwatch open on my second monitor filtered to whatever bands im on and then when something interesting pops up i quickly open QRZ in another tab to see if theres any info on the callsign, like their location or any notes other people have left. sometimes theres a lot of useful info, sometimes its basically empty. is this pretty normal or are there better apps that kind of combine these things? i heard about some logging software that pulls in cluster data directly but i dont know where to start with that honestly.

also side question — does anyone use the QRZ logbook on mobile? ive been trying the app but it feels a little clunky to me, maybe im missing something

yeah that workflow you're describing is basically what a lot of people do when they're starting out with DX, nothing wrong with it at all. the cluster plus QRZ lookup combo is pretty classic. where it gets more powerful is when you pull the cluster feed into your logging software directly — Log4OM and DXKeeper both do this, and i think even the free version of Log4OM handles it pretty well. you set it up once and spots just flow in, and when you click a spot it can pull the callsign info automatically. saves a ton of tab switching.

for mobile the QRZ app is honestly a bit hit or miss depending on your phone i think. i mostly just use the mobile browser version of QRZ when im portable, its not pretty but it works. Club Log also has decent mobile support if you want to track your DXCC progress on the go which is kind of addictive once you start

same boat as you a few months ago lol. i ended up going down a rabbit hole with this stuff. one thing that helped me was setting up filters on the cluster so im not drowning in spots for bands i cant work — DXwatch lets you do that, and so does DX Summit which is another one worth bookmarking. the QRZ thing is useful but yeah sometimes the pages are super bare, especially for rarer DX entities where the operator just put up a basic page.

havent really cracked the mobile logging thing either tbh, i just take notes on paper when im portable and sort it out later which is probably terrible practice but it works for me so far