so ive been licensed about 3 years now and mostly just ragchewed on 40m and did some local nets but lately ive been getting into DX and honestly its kind of addictive. im sitting at around 87 confirmed entities right now on LoTW which i know isnt a lot compared to some of you guys but its exciting to me.

my question is mostly about how the credit submission process works. i understand you need 100 confirmed for the basic DXCC award but do all the confirmations have to be through LoTW or can you mix paper QSLs and LoTW? i have a bunch of paper cards from some of the earlier contacts and i wasnt sure if those count toward the same total. also does anyone know if WAS and DXCC credits are tracked separately on the ARRL side or is it all one big account thing. asking because i want to start chasing WAS too and dont want to mess up my records somehow.

anyway been lurking here a while and you guys seem helpful so figured id just ask instead of trying to decode the ARRL website for another hour

yeah you can absolutley mix paper QSLs and LoTW confirmations, they all count toward the same DXCC total. you just submit the paper cards through the card checker process at an ARRL convention or mail them in depending on what division youre in. the LoTW credits get applied automatically when you submit for the award. DXCC and WAS are tracked completely separately, different awards different databases on their end, so no worries there.

87 confirmed at 3 years is honestly pretty solid especially if youre not running a big station. what bands are you working mostly? if youre only on 40 you're leaving a lot on the table, 17 and 15 can be great for EU and Asia when the bands cooperate and a lot of guys sleep on 12m which can be wide open sometimes.

I was in the same boat not too long ago, kind of overwhelmed by all the award tracking stuff. One thing that helped me was just setting up a LoTW account properly and making sure every QSO gets uploaded even if you dont expect a confirmation back. you'd be surprised how many confirmations just show up weeks later out of nowhere. for WAS i actually found it easier to chase than DXCC just because you have more control, like you can specifically hunt for states you're missing instead of waiting for some rare DX entity to come on. good luck with it, its a fun rabbit hole to fall into