so ive been licensed about two years now and mostly just done local stuff and some casual HF but a buddy at my club showed me his DXCC certificate last meeting and honestly it kind of lit a fire under me. i had no idea how deep the rabbit hole went with all these awards.

i started looking into it and now im confused about the difference between chasing DXCC vs WAS vs WAZ because they all seem to overlap somewhat? like if im logging contacts for one am i automatically making progress on the others or do i have to do something special. also does it matter what mode — im mostly doing SSB right now but ive been thinking about trying FT8 because everyone says thats where the DX is these days.

and one more thing, do i need to be submitting QSLs the whole time or can i go back and claim credits from old contacts. i have like 8 months of logs sitting in WSJT and HAMRS that i havent done anything with yet

welcome to the addiction, fair warning it does not get cheaper lol. okay so to your questions — yes your contacts can count toward multiple awards at the same time, thats the beauty of it. a QSO with say ZL (New Zealand) counts as a DXCC entity, its in zone 32 for WAZ, and obviously doesnt help your WAS since thats US states only. but you log it once and it works for everything. you do have to apply for each award separately though through ARRL for DXCC and WAS, and CQ Magazine handles WAZ.

for modes, DXCC is now broken into mixed, phone, CW, digital, and a few satellite categories so FT8 counts under digital. a lot of guys run all modes and submit for mixed first since that fills up fastest. SSB is still perfectly fine for DX, dont let anyone tell you otherwise, but yeah the FT8 pile-ups for rare entities can be a bit more manageable sometimes.

and yes absolutely go back and claim those old contacts. as long as you have the log data and can get the QSLs confirmed either via LoTW or paper cards, the date doesnt matter. get yourself set up on Logbook of the World if you havent already, thats really the easiest way to accumulate credits without chasing physical cards everywhere.

yeah what he said about LoTW is huge. i was in the same spot as you not too long ago and the first thing i did was upload all my old logs to LoTW and was surprised how many confirmed just automatically because the other station had already uploaded their side. got like 30-something DXCC credits without doing anything extra which felt like cheating almost haha

WAZ is the one i find most satisfying honestly because 40 zones is very doable even with a modest station, some of the zones are tricky but not impossible. zone 2 and a couple of the pacific ones gave me grief for a while