ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about chasing DX and all these different awards and honestly im a little overwhelmed trying to figure out what any of it means. like i understand DXCC is working 100 countries or entities or whatever theyre called, but then theres WAS which is the 50 states thing, and WAZ is zones? and people talk about mixed mode vs phone vs cw credits like theyre totally separate things?

i got my general last spring and ive been logging contacts but i wasnt really paying attention to what counted for what. does LoTW automatically track all this or do i have to manually figure out which contacts apply to which award? and do i need to submit anything or does it just kind of build up in the background. ive got maybe 40 states confirmed on LoTW already just from ragchewing and some contests i jumped into and i didnt even realize i was close to WAS until someone mentioned it in another thread

also is it worth going for all three or do most people just pick one to focus on. i dont want to spread myself too thin but i also dont want to miss contacts that would count

yeah the whole thing can feel like alphabet soup at first, totally get it. so basically LoTW does track everything in the background as long as you upload your logs regularly — you dont have to do anything special per-contact. when you want to actually apply for an award you go into the ARRL LoTW interface and it'll show you your confirmed credits broken down by entity, state, zone, band, mode, all of it. you only pay when you actually apply for the award certificate.

the mixed/phone/cw thing just means you can earn separate endorsements. like if you work all 100 DXCC entities on CW only thats a harder thing to do and you get a CW endorsement on top of the basic mixed one. for starting out dont worry about it, just log everything and let LoTW sort it out.

honestly id say go for WAS first since you're already almost there without even trying. 40 states confirmed is really close — the hard ones are usually Delaware, Rhode Island, sometimes the dakotas depending on propagation. once you knock that out DXCC becomes the real rabbit hole and trust me it is absolutely a rabbit hole lol. WAZ kind of takes care of itself along the way

i was in the same boat about a year ago and just picked WAS to start becuase it felt more achievable and i could actually track progress. ended up submitting for it about 4 months after i got serious about uploading to LoTW. the feeling when it came through was pretty great ngl.

DXCC is where it gets addictive though. once you hit 100 you start looking at the list thinking ok what am i missing and then you're staying up until 2am trying to work some rare entity that only has one active station every few years. my wife thinks im losing my mind but here we are at 187 confirmed and counting