so ive been licensed about eight months now and i honestly still dont fully understand the whole QSL confirmation thing. like i get the basic concept — you confirm you made contact with someone — but theres so many ways to do it and i cant figure out if i need to use all of them or if one is good enough.

right now i have a LoTW account set up because someone at my club told me thats the main one for DXCC credit. and i signed up for eQSL too but i barely use it. i havent sent or received a single paper card yet and honestly the whole process of getting cards printed and mailing them seems kind of intimidating plus it costs money.

do most people just do LoTW and call it a day? or is there a reason to bother with eQSL on top of that? and when is a paper card actually required, like is it just for certain awards or do people really still prefer getting physical cards in the mail?

honestly for most things LoTW is the one that matters if you're chasing DXCC or WAS. the ARRL accepts LoTW credits for both of those so if thats your goal you can pretty much live in LoTW and be fine. i barely touch eQSL personally, its kind of its own ecosystem and a lot of serious DXers dont bother with it but some do.

paper cards are still a thing and some people genuinely love them, i have a whole wall covered in them from my early years. theyre basically required if you want certain older or specialty awards that dont accept electronic confirmation, and some DX entities have very limited activity so if you ever work a rare one the paper card is kind of a trophy. but for day to day contacts? upload to LoTW and dont stress about the rest. you can always get into paper cards later if you catch the bug for it, and you will probably catch the bug eventually.

i was in the same spot not that long ago and what finally made it click for me was realizing they kind of serve diffrent purposes. LoTW is the serious one for awards, eQSL is more casual and some people just like collecting the artwork honestly some of those digital cards look really cool. paper cards are kind of sentimental but also still required for certain things like if you ever apply for a wallpaper award through certain organizations.

i use TQSL to upload my log to LoTW after most sessions and it takes like two minutes once you have it configured. dont overthink it, just keep uploading your logs and the confirmations start coming in on their own when the other station uploads too.