so ive been licensed for about 3 years now and mostly just ragchewed on 40m and did some local nets but lately ive been getting into actually working DX and someone at the club mentioned DXCC and now im kind of obsessed with the idea of chasing it properly. i worked a guy in Japan last week on 20m which felt incredible but i have no idea if that contact is going to count for anything or if i needed to do something special beforehand to make it count.

my main confusion is around how you actually submit credits. like do you need paper QSL cards for everything or is LOTW the way to go now. i heard some guys saying they wont upload to LOTW and only do paper cards which sounds like a nightmare honestly. also whats the deal with WAS and WAZ — are those totally separate awards from different organizations or does the ARRL handle all of them. sorry if these are dumb questions im just trying to figure out the whole ecosystem before i get too deep into this

not dumb questions at all, this stuff is confusing when you first start digging into it. ok so DXCC is the big one and yeah the ARRL runs it — you need confirmed contacts with 100 different entities (countries basically, though its more complicated than that). LOTW is absolutely the way to go if you can, most serious DX operators upload there and you get credit confirmed almost instantly once both sides upload. paper cards still work and some rare DX only does cards so you'll need to deal with that eventually, but for starting out LOTW will get you most of your credits without the hassle.

WAS is also ARRL — worked all states, 50 confirmed contacts one per state. WAZ is a different one, thats CQ magazine's award, worked all zones, there are 40 CQ zones worldwide. so yeah separate organizations for that last one. the good news is a lot of your LOTW uploads count toward multiple awards at once depending on how things line up. just keep logging everything with accurate info and upload regularly, that Japan contact definitely counts for DXCC as long as you got a confirmation.

welcome to the rabbit hole lol. i got into DXCC chasing about a year ago and it completely changed how i operate. one thing nobody told me at first — make sure your callsign is on LOTW before you do anything else, the process to get set up takes a little while and you want everything ready. also dont stress too much about cards from guys who wont do LOTW, you can still request bureau cards through the ARRL outgoing bureau which is pretty cheap, just slow. the rare ones are worth chasing though