so ive been licensed about three years now and mostly just ragchewed on 40m and did a bit of FT8 but lately ive been getting really into working DX and someone at our club meeting mentioned DXCC and now im kind of obsessed with it. i went and looked at the ARRL page and honestly its a lot to take in all at once — like theres DXCC itself but then theres also WAS and WAZ and all these different bands and modes and i dont even know which one to focus on first or if i should just try to work everything and sort it out later.

right now im running a IC-7300 into a G5RV up about 30 feet so nothing special but ive worked maybe 60 or 70 entities already just messing around without really trying. someone told me those contacts might count if i can confirm them, is that true? i have all my logs in WSJT-X and also some in the ARRL logbook thing. does LoTW automatically apply for credits or do i have to do something manually to claim them toward DXCC?

sorry if this is a dumb question, just trying to figure out the whole system before i get too far down the rabbit hole

not a dumb question at all, this stuff is genuinely confusing at first. so yes those contacts absolutely count as long as the other station uploads their log to LoTW and the QSL matches up — date, band, mode, callsign all have to line up. the ARRL system will credit them automatically once you apply for the award, you just have to submit an application through their website and pay the fee. you dont have to do anything special during the actual contact.

my honest advice is dont worry about WAS or WAZ yet, just go for basic DXCC first. get to 100 confirmed entities and apply for the certificate, then start worrying about band endorsements and all that. a G5RV at 30 feet is totally workable for this especially on FT8, ive seen guys with way less antenna get to 200+ entities. just be patient and work stuff when propagation cooperates. also check dx-world.net and dxsummit daily, that'll tell you whats on and where, way more useful than just randomly calling CQ

yeah LoTW is pretty much the backbone of all this now, the days of mailing paper QSLs for every contact are kind of fading out though some guys still do it especially for rare DX where the operator might not be on LoTW. i went through all this same stuff about two years ago and honestly WAS ended up being harder for me than DXCC because some states are just dead quiet, like Rhode Island i swear i almost never hear anyone from there. just something to keep in mind if you go down that road, WAZ was actually easier imo once you figure out the zone map.