ok so i've been licensed about 8 months now and i keep seeing people talk about chasing DXCC and WAS and WAZ and honestly i thought they were all kind of the same thing but they're clearly not and i'm getting confused trying to figure out which one i should even be working toward first

from what i can tell WAS is just working all 50 states which seems more doable for me right now since i'm running 100 watts into a dipole in a suburban backyard, and DXCC is working 100 entities which sounds cool but i dont even know what counts as an entity vs a country because apparently they're different? like is Hawaii its own entity or is it just part of the US

and then WAZ is zones and i honestly havent even started to figure that one out yet

also how does lotw work with all this, do i need separate accounts or does it just track everything automatically once i start logging confirmed contacts. my elmer mentioned something about applying for credits separately for each award which sounds annoying but maybe im misunderstanding him

Hawaii is just W6 so it counts as the same entity as the rest of the US for DXCC purposes — same with Alaska. But for WAS they obviously count as states so you still need them for that award. The entity thing trips a lot of people up at first, basically the ARRL has a list of current DXCC entities and it doesnt map 1:1 to countries at all, some small islands or territories count separately even if theyre politically part of a bigger country.

For lotw — yeah you set it up once and it tracks all your confirmed QSOs in one place, but you do have to apply for each award separately and pay the application fee when you're ready. The credits themselves accumulate automatically as people upload their logs and match with yours, you'll start seeing your totals go up without doing anything. I'd honestly just focus on WAS first since with 100w and a dipole you can do it on 40 and 80 meters without too much trouble, especially if you're patient and hit the bands when propagation cooperates. DXCC will come naturally as you work more DX anyway, you might be surprised how many entities you've already worked without realizing it.

WAZ took me forever to wrap my head around too honestly, basically the world is divided into 40 CQ zones and you need a confirmed contact from each one. Some zones are genuinely hard to get because not many operators are active there or the propagation just doesnt work well from your location depending on where you are in the world. Zone 1 up in the arctic regions is one people struggle with for example.

one thing i'll say is just start logging everything from day one and upload to lotw as you go, future you will thank you. i spent like two years casually working stations before i realized i was already most of the way to basic DXCC and didn't even know it because i wasn't paying attention