so ive been playing around with online cluster spotting for a few months now and i think im getting the hang of it but wanted to see what others do. basically i have DXwatch open in one tab and then the QRZ logbook in another and i just kind of bounce back and forth when im looking for a new entity or a new band slot. works okay i guess but it feels clunky.

someone at my club mentioned there's apps that kind of pull everything together? like Ham Radio Deluxe does some of this i think but i dont really want to pay for software if a free option does the same thing. also not sure if all the spots on dxwatch are reliable - i've chased a few that turned out to be pirates or busted calls which is frustrating. anyway curious what workflow other people are using especially if youre running a modest station, im just a100w and a dipole at about 30 feet so i have to be a little picky about what i chase.

yeah the workflow thing is real, i went through the same thing when i first got into dx chasing. what i ended up doing was just using DX Summit on one monitor and keeping my logging software open on the other. the spots on dxwatch and dx summit are mostly pulling from the same cluster network so you dont really need both honestly.

for free options, Log4OM has cluster integration built in and it's completely free, that might be worth a look. also the QRZ logbook has gotten better about showing band conditions but i still trust pskreporter more for figuring out if propagation is actually going to cooperate before i even bother tuning around. for what its worth your setup is totally fine for working dx, ive seen guys with less than that work 200 entities so dont let the 100w thing discourage you

the pirate thing is annoying and honestly just kind of comes with the territory for certain activations. after a while you get a feel for which callsigns to be skeptical of, like if you see a super rare entity spotted on like 14.195 with a massive pileup and then nobody on the clusters seems to be actually confirming a qso it's usually a red flag. there are a few dx info sites that track known pirates too if you search around.

im fairly new myself so take this with a grain of salt but the HamAlert app has been pretty useful for me, you set up triggers for specific callsigns or entities and it just pings your phone. kind of nice so you're not staring at a cluster all day waiting