ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about chasing DXCC and WAS and WAZ and honestly i thought i understood it but the more i read the more confused i get. like i know DXCC is working 100 countries or entities or whatever they call them, and WAS is all 50 states, but then WAZ is zones and i dont even fully understand how the zones work — are they the same as ITU zones or is that a different thing entirely?

also im trying to figure out if i should be logging contacts specifically with awards in mind or just logging everything and then sorting it out later. i have like 200 contacts in my log already and i have no idea if any of them count toward anything. im using WSJT-X for FT8 mostly with a simple wire dipole up about 25 feet, so i dont know if that even matters for award purposes.

basically just trying to understand how people manage all this without going crazy. do most people use some kind of software to track it or are there guys still doing it on paper

haha yeah the zone thing trips everybody up at first. WAZ uses CQ zones, not ITU zones — there are 40 CQ zones that cover the whole world and you need to work a station in each one. ITU zones are a totally different animal and used for some other awards, HF Century Club being one of them i think. definitely not interchangeable.

as for tracking, seriously just get yourself a copy of Log4OM or even just use LOTW and let it do the heavy lifting. if you upload your existing ADI file from WSJT-X to Logbook of the World, it'll start matching your confirmed contacts against DXCC entities automatically. same goes for Club Log — upload your log there and it'll show you a map of what you've worked and what's confirmed. you'd be surprised how much progress you might already have without knowing it.

FT8 is totally valid for all the major awards by the way, no worries there. i worked most of my first 100 DXCC entities on FT8 with a pretty modest setup. the dipole might limit you on some of the rarer ones but for getting started it's absolutely fine. just keep logging everything, upload to LOTW regularly, and sort it out later — that's pretty much what everyone does.

so anyway the thing that helped me most was just picking ONE award to focus on first. i tried to chase everything at once when i started and it was overwhelming. WAS is actually a really good starting point if you're in the US because honestly on FT8 you can knock it out pretty fast, states are active all the time. then once you get that under your belt the whole award mentality kind of clicks and DXCC starts making more sense.

also dont stress too much about the paper cards vs electronic thing. LOTW confirmations count for ARRL awards and most people use that now. some awards still want physical QSL cards tho so it depends on which one your going after. the ARRL has a page that explains which confirmations they accept for each award and its worth bookmarking.