so ive been licensed about 3 years now and mostly just ragchewed and did some local stuff but lately ive been getting really into DX and somebody at the club mentioned DXCC and now i cant stop thinking about it lol

i understand the basics - 100 confirmed entities and you get the basic award, and then there's endorsements and all that. what i dont fully get is how the credit submission actually works now. i know Logbook of the World is involved but do ALL my QSOs need to be in LoTW or just the ones i want to use for credits? and what about paper QSLs, can i still use those for DXCC or is it basically all LoTW now

also someone mentioned WAS and WAZ and honestly im not even sure which one to chase first. feels like WAS (worked all states) would be more achievable starting out but maybe WAZ zones is more interesting? i dunno. any advice from people who have been doing this a while would be appreciated. im sitting at maybe 60-something entities confirmed in LoTW already just from normal operating so apparently i was closer than i thought

oh man 60+ confirmed already without even trying, you're going to blast through DXCC no problem once you start paying attention to what you need. the LoTW thing - you dont need every QSO in there, only the ones you're actually submitting for credit. but honestly you'll want to get in the habit of uploading everything because you never know when that random contact with some rare entity pays off six months later when they finally upload too.

paper QSLs still work for DXCC, you'd just have to send them in to the ARRL with an application and there's a fee involved. most people do it all through LoTW now because its just way easier and cheaper over time. the only time paper really matters anymore is for entities where the operator never uploads to LoTW, which unfortunately still happens with some DXpeditions especially from certain parts of the world.

as for WAS vs WAZ - i'd say do WAS first just because its more approachable and you can work a lot of states on a random Tuesday afternoon. WAZ gets tricky because some of the zones are genuinely rare and you might wait a long time for zone 2 or some of the Pacific zones. get WAS under your belt and it'll give you the confidence to go after the others

yeah what he said about LoTW is right. i went through the paper QSL route years ago before LoTW was really a thing and it was honestly kind of a pain, keeping cards organized, getting them all sorted by entity, mailing them in... LoTW is just so much cleaner even if setting it up the first time is a little confusing with the certificates and all that.

one thing nobody told me starting out - keep a separate log or at least a notes column for which entities you still need vs which ones you have confirmed. i spent a bunch of time chasing stuff i already had confirmed because i wasnt tracking it properly. DXKeeper or even just a spreadsheet does the job fine