so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i keep hearing about all these different ways to confirm contacts and honestly its kind of confusing. like i know you can mail physical QSL cards which seems cool and old school but also theres LoTW through the ARRL and then theres eQSL and apparently some people use all three? i dont really understand why you would need more than one system

i did set up an account on eQSL a while back and i have like 14 confirmations sitting there but i havent done anything with LoTW yet because the whole digital certificate process looked really intimidating when i tried to read through it. is it worth the hassle to get that set up or do most people just skip it

also are physical QSL cards still a thing people actually want or is that kind of dying out. i made some cards through one of those online printers and they turned out nice but i havent mailed any yet because i wasnt sure about the whole bureau system and direct mail thing

oh man i remember feeling exactly the same way when i first got my ticket. okay so the short version is: LoTW is the one that actually counts for ARRL awards like DXCC, so if you ever want to chase any of that stuff you really do need to get it set up. the certificate process is annoying but you only have to do it once and then its pretty painless after that. just follow the tqsl instructions step by step and dont rush it

eQSL is fine and some people love it but a lot of the serious DX stations dont bother with it so your match rate can be lower depending on who you're working. its still nice to have though

physical cards are absolutely still a thing, probably more so than you'd think. there are stations out there that will only confirm via paper, especially some of the older ops and a lot of the rare DX entities. i still get cards in the mail a few times a month and it honestly never gets old. the bureau is slow like sometimes years slow but its free basically. if you want something quicker you can go direct with an SASE or sometimes green stamps for DX stations

yeah I use all three and have for years. LoTW is kind of the gold standard for award chasing, eQSL is more casual and has some neat artwork on the cards people design, and paper QSLs are just fun. i have a whole wall of them in my shack and some of them are genuinely beautiful pieces of paper from places like Heard Island or some tiny Pacific atoll.

dont stress too much about the LoTW setup, just block out like an hour one evening and go through it. the hardest part is waiting for the ARRL to mail you the confirmation code which takes a few days. after that you just upload your log through tqsl and it handles everything. i do it after every contest weekend basically out of habit now