ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep seeing people talk about uploading logs to LoTW and eQSL and also sending paper QSL cards and im genuinely confused about whether i need to do all of these or if one is good enough

like i worked a station in japan last week and he said 73 QSL via bureau and i didnt even know what the bureau was until i looked it up, and then i find out it can take like a year or two for cards to actually arrive?? thats wild to me

i signed up for LoTW and uploaded my log from WSJT-X but i have no idea if its actually working because none of my contacts show as confirmed yet. do both people have to upload for it to show up? and does eQSL do the same thing or is it totally separate

just trying to figure out what the actual workflow is that most people use. i dont want to spend money on paper cards if digital is basically the same thing for awards and stuff

yeah both people have to upload to LoTW for a contact to confirm, thats the thing that trips everyone up at first. some guys upload once a month, some do it every day, and some never bother at all unfortunately. so you might be waiting a while on some of those

eQSL is completely separate from LoTW, they dont talk to each other. eQSL is faster and a lot more casual — most people confirm pretty quickly there — but its not accepted for DXCC which is the big one most people care about. LoTW confirmations count for DXCC and a bunch of other ARRL awards, so thats why people bother with it even though its a bit clunky to set up

as for paper cards, honestly you dont have to do it but there is something kind of nice about getting a card in the mail from a country youve never received mail from before. i still send cards for anything that feels special to me, like a new DXCC entity or a contact that was genuinely hard to pull off. for everyday FT8 contacts i dont bother sending paper

the bureau thing is just a cheap way to send cards internationally without paying postage to every country yourself. your national society collects them and ships them in batches. slow but cheap

im in pretty much the same boat as you actually, been licensed about a year and just started getting into the awards stuff. one thing i'll add is that for FT8 specifically a lot of people do upload to LoTW pretty regularly because the logging software makes it easy, so your confirmation rate might actually be decent once a few weeks go by

i did buy some paper QSL cards when i first got licensed and i dont regret it, its fun to get one back in the mail even if it takes forever. but for chasing awards LoTW is really the main thing you want to focus on