ok so ive been licensed for about 4 months now and i keep hearing about all these different ways to confirm contacts and im honestly a little lost. like my elmer told me to sign up for LoTW which i did, and then someone in my club mentioned eQSL is also a thing, and then there are actual physical QSL cards which i understand the concept of but have no idea how the mailing actually works — do you just send them directly to the other operator? through a bureau? what even is a bureau lol

i made contact with a station in Japan last week (super excited about that, my first DX outside north america) and he mentioned he'd send me a card. does that mean i should send him one back? i dont even have cards printed yet. is it rude not to send one back?

basically i guess im asking — what do most people actually use these days and do i need to be on all of them to be taken seriously or get any awards eventually. sorry if this is a super basic question

not a basic question at all, honestly this confuses a lot of new hams because nobody really explains it all in one place. so the short version is — LoTW (Logbook of the World, run by the ARRL) is basically the gold standard if you're going after DXCC or other ARRL awards. confirmations on there carry the most weight for awards purposes. eQSL is another electronic system, some people use it a lot especially for the Worked All States digital award through eQSL itself, but it's not accepted for DXCC so just keep that in mind.

physical cards are kind of their own thing and honestly a lot of people still love them, myself included. there's something really nice about getting a card in the mail from a station you worked halfway around the world. the bureau system is how most international cards get routed — your national society (ARRL in the US) runs an outgoing bureau where you send a batch of cards and they route them to the right country bureaus, and there's an incoming bureau where cards addressed to you pile up until you request them. it's slow, like sometimes years, but basically free or very cheap compared to direct mail.

for your Japan contact — don't stress about not having cards yet. most DX operators are totally understanding. you can upload the contact to LoTW pretty quickly once you get your certificate set up, and that's probably the most useful thing you can do right now. get some cards printed eventually, they're a fun part of the hobby but not urgent.

yeah what he said. i'd just add that i personally use all three and it's not as annoying to maintain as it sounds once you get your logging software set up to auto-upload. i use Log4OM and it pushes to LoTW and eQSL pretty much automatically after i close out a session.

physical cards i only do direct mail for really special contacts, like a rare DXCC entity or something. sending everything through the bureau is fine but like i said it's slow and you kind of forget about it. congrats on the Japan contact by the way, JA is a great first DX