ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now (General class) and i keep hearing people talk about DXCC and WAS and WAZ and honestly im a little lost on which one even makes sense to go after first. like i understand the basic concept — work enough entities or states or zones and you get a certificate — but i dont really understand how the credit submission process works or whether you need paper QSLs for all of them or if LoTW is enough for most of it.

i've been logging everything on LoTW since day one because someone told me to, which i guess was good advice, so hopefully some of those contacts count toward something. i'm running a modest station, ic-7300 into a trapped vertical in the backyard, nothing fancy. i've worked maybe 60 or 70 countries so far i think but i havent actually confirmed very many on LoTW yet because a lot of the rare ones dont upload there apparently.

anyway if someone could just explain like which award is most approachable for a newer ham or which one to focus on first that would be really helpful. or if theres a reason to chase all three at once i guess i could try that too. just dont want to waste a bunch of money submitting credits for the wrong thing first

WAS is probably the most satisfying one to knock out early just because you can actually make progress on it pretty quickly, especially if you're on 40m and 20m during evenings. all 50 states is totally doable in a few months at a decent solar cycle like we've got now. and LoTW counts for WAS through ARRL so if people are uploading you're already building credits without knowing it. just log into your LoTW account and check under the awards section, you can see what you've got confirmed already.

DXCC is the big one and honestly once you get the bug it kind of takes over your life a little, not gonna lie. the 100 entity threshold for the basic certificate isnt that hard to hit if you're active and chasing DX, but getting the confirmations is where it slows down. LoTW is accepted for DXCC credits, and a lot of the common entities do upload, but yeah the rarer ones are paper QSL or nothing sometimes. some guys use a QSL bureau which is slow but cheap, others just direct card the rare ones.

WAZ i'd probably leave for a bit later, working all 40 CQ zones sounds simpler than DXCC but some of those zones are legitimately hard to get and can take years depending on propagation and who's active. it's a good ongoing project once you have the other two underway.

honestly just chase whatever contacts sound fun and let the awards take care of themselves, thats kind of how i ended up with DXCC without really planning it. i was just on every morning before work working whatever was spotted on the cluster and after like a year and a half i had enough confirmed to submit. the submission process through ARRL isnt that scary, you basically just request the credits in LoTW once you have 100 confirmed entities and pay the fee and they send you the certificate.

one thing i will say — dont sleep on the CQ WPX award either if you like operating, its basically unlimited in scope and you can work toward it without even thinking about it. different strokes though, some people really like having a specific goal to chase