ok so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i keep seeing people talk about uploading logs to LoTW and eQSL and also mailing out paper QSL cards and im honestly not sure which ones i actually need to bother with. like is there a standard thing most people do or is it just whatever you feel like?

i signed up for LoTW a while back and got the certificate and everything but i havent actually uploaded anything yet because i wasnt sure if my log format was right. im using Log4OM if that matters. and then someone at the club said i should also do eQSL but that seems like a separate thing entirely and now im just kind of paralyzed about the whole thing.

also paper QSLs — i designed one and had like 200 printed but havent sent a single one out yet because i dont really understand the bureau system. do i just mail them to the ARRL? sorry if these are dumb questions, its a lot to figure out at once

not dumb questions at all, this stuff is genuinely confusing when you're starting out. ok so the short version: LoTW is run by the ARRL and is the most widely accepted for award credit, especially DXCC. eQSL is a totally separate service, older crowd is kind of mixed on it but plenty of people use it. neither one replaces the other, they just dont talk to each other.

for uploading from Log4OM you just export an ADIF file and then use the TQSL software to sign and upload it to LoTW — theres a pretty good walkthrough on the ARRL site. once you get the workflow down it takes maybe two minutes after a session.

paper cards through the bureau — you send your outgoing cards to the incoming bureau for whatever country youre sending to, not directly to ARRL. theres a whole list on the ARRL site. honestly for most stateside contacts people have mostly moved to digital confirmation but for DX the paper card still means something to a lot of operators, especially the older ones. i still send them for any new entity or any contact that felt special.

yeah same boat as you were not too long ago lol. what finally got me to just do it was realizing i didnt have to pick one — i just set Log4OM to auto-upload to LoTW after every session and i also have it syncing to eQSL automatically, so i dont really think about it anymore. took an afternoon to get configured but now its just running in the background.

the paper cards i mostly only send now if someone specifically sends me one first or if its a really rare contact. kind of feels like the right way to handle it without drowning in postage costs honestly