so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about confirming contacts and i honestly still dont fully understand the whole system. like i get the basic idea of QSL cards, you send a card and the other person sends one back and you have a physical confirmation of the contact. that part makes sense.

but then theres LoTW which is the ARRL thing and eQSL which is a totally different thing and from what i can tell some awards count one but not the other? and i heard some DX stations only upload to LoTW and dont bother with paper cards anymore. and then some people say eQSL doesnt really count for anything serious which seems harsh but i dont know.

i went ahead and signed up for both LoTW and eQSL accounts but i havent really done anything with them. do i need to get a certificate or something for LoTW? i remember reading something about that but i lost the page. and is there a way to log everything in one place or do you have to manually upload to each service separately. using WSJT-X and JTDX mostly if that matters, mostly FT8.

okay so yeah this confused me too when i was starting out, its actually not that complicated once someone explains it properly. LoTW is the Logbook of The World run by the ARRL and for awards like DXCC it's basically the gold standard — most serious DX chasers upload there and it counts for official ARRL awards. the certificate thing you're thinking of is a TQSL certificate, you request it through the ARRL and they send you a postcard with a code to verify your address, takes a week or two by mail. once you have that set up you use the TQSL software to sign and upload your log and it matches your callsign against whoever you worked if they also uploaded.

eQSL is totally separate, its more casual and some awards accept it but a lot of the big ones dont. that said plenty of people use it and its fine for general confirmations, just dont expect it to count for DXCC or WAS through the ARRL.

for FT8 specifically, WSJT-X can log directly to various things and there are tools like TQSL or JTAlert that can automate uploading to LoTW. honestly once you get it set up its pretty painless. paper cards are still fun though if you ever work someone rare or have a nice QSO, some people still really appreciate getting a card in the mail.

the TQSL certificate request thing tripped me up too when i first did it, just make sure the address you use matches your FCC license exactly or it can cause headaches. also clublog is another one worth knowing about, lot of DXpeditions use it and you can check if your callsign is in their log before anything even gets confirmed, saved me a lot of wondering more than once.