so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i keep hearing about all these different ways to confirm contacts and honestly im a little lost. like i set up a LoTW account a while back and uploaded some logs but i have no idea if anyone is actually confirming back, and then someone on the air told me i should also be on eQSL which is apparently different? and then there's the whole physical card thing which honestly looks really fun but i dont even know where to start with that.

my main question i guess is — do most people do all three or just pick one? i made maybe 200 contacts so far mostly on 40m and some FT8 and i have a pile of physical cards that came in the mail already which is cool but i havent sent any back yet and now i feel bad about that. is there like a standard expectation that you reply to every card?

sorry if this is a dumb question, just trying to figure out the whole confirmation ecosystem i guess

not a dumb question at all, this stuff genuinely confused me for years when i first got started. ok so the short version is LoTW is run by ARRL and it's the one that counts for DXCC and most of the big awards, so if you care about chasing awards eventually you'll want that set up properly. eQSL is a separate thing, some people swear by it and others dont bother, it has its own award system and a lot of dx stations upload there too so it's worth having an account even if you dont check it every day.

physical cards are totally optional but yeah there is kind of an unwritten expectation that if someone sends you one you send one back, especially if they included a self addressed envelope or an IRC. for FT8 contacts most people just do the digital confirmations and dont bother with paper but its really up to you. i'd say check your LoTW account, you probably have more confirmations sitting there than you realize, the interface is a little clunky but once you get used to it it makes sense. and go get yourself some cards made, QRZ sells them pretty cheap and its one of those things you'll be glad you did

yeah im kind of in the same boat haha, been licensed two years and i still have a stack of incoming cards on my desk that i keep meaning to reply to. my buddy told me if its a bureau card you have maybe 6 months before it looks rude but honestly most people are pretty understanding i think. the LoTW thing though — make sure your callsign certificate is actually current because mine expired and i didn't notice for like three months and none of my uploads were going through, that was annoying to sort out