ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about DXCC and WAS and WAZ and honestly im starting to get lost trying to figure out what each one actually is and whether you need all of them or if they overlap somehow. like are these all run by the ARRL? do you apply for them separately? i talked to a guy at our club last week who said he was chasing his 5BDXCC and i just nodded like i knew what that meant lol

i've been logging contacts since day one so hopefully i have some credits building up, i just never really knew what i was tracking toward. running a modest station here, IC-7300 into a G5RV in a small backyard, so nothing fancy. mostly 40m and 20m. any pointers on where to even start with this stuff would be really appreciated

so basically yeah they're all separate awards with different requirements. WAS is Worked All States — you need confirmed contacts with all 50 US states, pretty achievable once you get some propagation going your way. WAZ is Worked All Zones, that's the 40 CQ zones worldwide, a bit trickier depending on where you are. DXCC is the big one most people talk about — 100 confirmed DXCC entities, and yeah the ARRL runs all three of those.

5BDXCC just means the guy earned DXCC on five bands, which is a serious accomplishment. dont let that intimidate you though, getting your basic DXCC or WAS is totally doable from a modest station especially on 40 and 20. the G5RV gets a bad rap sometimes but plenty of people have made it work for DX. i'd say start by getting set up on Logbook of the World — LoTW — because thats what the ARRL uses to confirm QSOs electronically and you'll want those credits accumulating from contacts you've already made if the other stations also upload there.

yeah what he said, LoTW is the key thing to get sorted first. i waited like two years before i set it up and kicking myself for all those early contacts that never got confirmed. the certificate request process through the ARRL is a bit of paperwork but its worth doing early so you dont lose those qsos

honestly chasing WAS first might be a good gateway because working all 50 states feels really tangible and you'll start to understand propagation a lot better just from doing it. some of the rarer states like ND and WY took me forever to snag on certain bands. then once you catch the bug you'll find yourself staying up way too late trying to work some tiny island in the pacific for a new entity and thats when you know DXing has got you