okay so ive been licensed about 8 months now and im honestly still confused about all the different ways to confirm contacts. like i understand the basic concept — you worked someone, you both confirm it, done. but theres LoTW, eQSL, and then actual physical QSL cards and i cant figure out if i need to be doing all of them or if one is better than the others or what.

i set up my LoTW account a while back and i think its working but i only have like 12 confirmations in there and ive made way more contacts than that so either people arent uploading or im doing something wrong. and then someone at my club meeting mentioned eQSL and said its totally different and some people only use that one? and then theres guys who still want actual paper cards which i totally get the appeal of but it seems like a lot of effort and postage.

mostly asking because im trying to work toward DXCC eventually and i want to make sure im not missing confirmations i could be getting. any advice appreciated, sorry if this is a dumb question

not a dumb question at all, this stuff genuinely confused me for a while too when i first got into chasing awards.

short version is LoTW is the one that counts for ARRL awards like DXCC and WAS, so if thats your goal that's the one to focus on. eQSL is separate and doesnt count for DXCC credit but some people use it for other awards and some just like it. paper cards are still used for DXCC too but you have to mail them to the ARRL for checking which is kind of a pain and costs money, most people just do LoTW now for that.

the reason you only have 12 confirmations is probably just that not everyone uploads to LoTW regularly. some guys batch upload once a month or even less often, and some DX stations especially have a manager who handles it and it can take forever. theres not much you can do about that except wait. you can also check on qrz or hamqth if a station has a listed LoTW percentage which tells you how likely they are to upload.

i still request paper cards for anything rare just because i like having them, but for everyday contacts LoTW is really all you need for chasing awards. get your logs uploading consistently and the confirmations will come in over time.

yeah what he said about LoTW being the one for DXCC is right. i'll just add that eQSL does have its own awards system if you want to mess around with that, some people really get into it. and the cards on there can look pretty cool actually, some operators make really nice designs.

oh also make sure youre uploading your own log to LoTW, sounds obvious but i forgot to do that for like two months when i started and wondered why nothing was matching lol. you both have to upload for a confirmation to show up.