ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and ive been slowly logging contacts and someone at the club mentioned I should be working toward DXCC but then another guy said WAZ is more satisfying for HF newcomers and honestly im just kind of lost about the whole thing. like i understand the basic concept — work a certain number of entities or states or zones — but i dont really understand how the credit submission works or whether I need to get QSLs from every single contact or just the ones i submit.

also is there a difference between having a contact count and actually having confirmed credits? because my logging software shows like 47 countries worked but i only have maybe 12 physical QSL cards and a handful of LoTW confirmations. do those LoTW ones count toward the actual award application or do i still need paper cards for everything. sorry if this is a really basic question, the ARRL website kind of goes in circles when i try to read through it

so the short answer is yes, LoTW confirmations absolutely count for DXCC — actually the ARRL basically built LoTW around DXCC so its really well integrated. you log your contacts, upload your ADIF to LoTW, and when the other station also uploads their log and there's a match, that becomes a confirmed credit. you dont need paper cards at all if both stations are on LoTW.

as for which award to chase first, honestly i'd say just let it happen naturally. work whatever stations you hear and over time you'll accumulate credits toward all three. DXCC needs 100 confirmed entities which takes a while but is very doable, WAS is 50 states which sounds easy but Alaska and Hawaii will make you wait, and WAZ is the 40 CQ zones which some people find trickier because zone boundaries dont follow country lines. the real trap is spending money on QSL bureau fees before you figure out if LoTW is going to cover most of your needs. get active on LoTW first, see where you stand after a few months of real operating.

i was in the exact same spot like two years ago and honestly just chasing DXCC casually was what got me hooked on DX in general. the thing nobody told me early on was that the 47 countries you worked — you need to check if they're actually 47 separate DXCC entities because some islands and territories that feel like different countries are actually the same entity, and some things that seem like the same country count as separate entities. the DXCC entity list on the ARRL site is the thing to cross reference. caught me off guard the first time i checked