so ive been licensed about 2 years now and been doing mostly local stuff and some casual HF but recently got bit by the DX bug pretty bad. started logging contacts more seriously and realized i might actually have enough for a basic DXCC if i dig through my old logs. my question is about submitting for credit - do i need QSLs for every single contact or does LoTW count now for most of them? i know some entities are really hard to get a physical card from.

also wondering about WAS vs DXCC - which one do people usually go after first? feels like WAS might be more achievable for me being in the midwest but i dont want to spend all my time on 40m ragchewing when i could be working DX. and WAZ i barely understand honestly, the zones thing confuses me a little. anyway any advice from people whove been through this process would be great, its a little overwhelming looking at the ARRL award pages

LoTW absolutely counts for DXCC, thats been the case for a long time now and honestly most serious DXers upload to LoTW pretty regularly these days so you'll get a lot of your credits confirmed that way without even asking for a card. the physical QSL route still matters for some of the rarer ones where the operator never bothered with LoTW but for bread and butter stuff you're fine.

as for WAS vs DXCC first - i'd say just chase whatever band is open and log everything, you'll naturally work toward both at the same time. i actually knocked out WAS before i even noticed i was close because 40m is so good for domestic contacts. WAZ took me longer to wrap my head around too, the ITU vs CQ zone thing trips people up but once you just pull up a zone map it clicks pretty fast. zone 14 here in the midwest means europe is zone 14 for us to work... wait no thats not right, we're in zone 4 and europe is various zones. you'll get it when you look at the map, trust me.

been chasing DXCC for about a year myself and the LoTW thing is huge, seriously upload everything you've ever logged and you might be surprised. i had contacts going back that i forgot about and boom there were confirmations waiting. the ARRL mixed DXCC is probably the most satisfying thing ive done in the hobby so far, just got past 150 confirmed last month.

one thing nobody told me early on - keep track of which band you worked each entity on because band-specific DXCC is a whole other rabbit hole. probably dont worry about that right away but just keep good logs with band and mode noted so you have the data later if you want it.