so ive been licensed for about 3 years now and mostly just did local stuff and some contests but a buddy of mine at the club keeps talking about DXCC and i got curious and started looking into it and now im kind of down a rabbit hole haha

from what i understand you need 100 confirmed entities for the basic award and then theres endorsements for different bands and modes and then theres WAS for states and WAZ for zones and they all kind of stack on top of each other? i submitted a couple QSLs through LoTW last week and got a few credits confirmed already which was exciting honestly

my main question is really about the best way to approach this — like should i just work everything i can hear and let the credits pile up naturally or is there some strategy to it? i have a pretty modest setup, IC-7300 and a dipole up about 30 feet, live in a suburb so not ideal but ive already worked like 40 or 50 entities i think just messing around over the past couple years. wondering if those old QSOs can still count if the other station uploaded to LoTW

yeah those old QSOs absolutely can count, thats the beauty of LoTW — when you upload your logs the system matches them against whatever the other station uploaded and boom, confirmed credit. ive had contacts from years back suddenly show up as confirmed when a station finally got around to uploading their log. so definitely upload everything you have going back as far as you can.

as for strategy, honestly with 40-50 entities already in the log on a modest setup youre doing fine. the first 100 come pretty quick if youre paying attention to the bands. 15 and 17 meters have been really good lately with the solar cycle picking up, id spend time there. the strategy part really kicks in when youre chasing the harder ones — the rare pacific islands, some of the african entities, stuff like that where you might only get one or two expeditions a year. for those you kinda have to plan around them. but for now just work everything you can hear and youll hit 100 before you know it

im in a similar boat actually, got my ticket two years ago and just crossed 87 entities confirmed on LoTW last month so getting close. one thing that helped me a lot was the DX Summit spotting network — you can filter by band and mode and just watch for new entities popping up. also the ARRL DXCC standings page shows you whats needed for a new one vs whats already in the log which is handy once you have a bigger log to work from

dont stress too much about WAS and WAZ at the same time unless you really want to, some people chase all of them simultaneously and it gets kinda complicated keeping track. i started with just focusing on DXCC and ill worry about zones later