ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about DXCC and chasing entities and all that. i kind of get the basic idea, you work a hundred different countries or whatever they call them, entities i guess, and then you apply for the award. but theres so much stuff i dont understand about the whole process.

like first off, how do you actually submit for the award now? i know the ARRL handles it but is everything through logbook of the world these days or do people still mail cards? and whats the deal with WAS and WAZ, are those totally separate things you chase independently or is there some overlap in how you track them? i feel like ive been casually logging contacts for months and probably have stuff that counts toward something but i have no idea what.

also someone at my local club mentioned mixed mode vs phone vs cw endorsements and i kind of nodded along but honestly didnt fully follow. do most people just go for mixed first and then worry about the mode-specific stuff later? sorry if these are dumb questions, just trying to figure out where to even start with all this

not dumb questions at all, this stuff is genuinely confusing at first because there are so many overlapping awards and tracking systems. so yeah DXCC is entities not countries, which trips everyone up early on because some entities are tiny islands or territories that count separately from the mainland. the ARRL has the official entity list on their site.

for submitting, basically everything goes through LoTW now and honestly that makes it a lot easier once you get your account set up. you upload your logs, your contacts get matched with other hams who also use LoTW, and confirmed QSOs just kind of accumulate. you can still use paper QSLs and submit a batch to an ARRL card checker but most people lean on LoTW for the bulk of it. for DXCC you need 100 confirmed entities to get the basic award, and yeah mixed is typically how people start because youre counting contacts on any mode.

WAS and WAZ are completely separate chases. WAS is working all 50 states which sounds easier than DX but some states like Delaware and Rhode Island can be surprisingly hard to catch on certain bands. WAZ is working all 40 CQ zones worldwide, thats a different kind of hunt. most logging software like Log4OM or HAMRS can track all of these simultaneously so you dont have to think too hard about sorting them out manually.

yeah what he said. i started doing the same thing, just logging everything casually and then one day opened up my log and realized i was like 60-something entities in without really trying. that was kind of the moment i got hooked on actually chasing stuff intentionally. get LoTW set up sooner rather than later honestly, some of those early contacts you might be able to match up if the other station uploaded their log too