okay so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about chasing dx and these various awards and honestly i get a little lost trying to figure out where to even start. like i understand the basic concept — you work stations in different countries or states or zones and then you submit cards or whatever to get credit — but the whole thing feels kind of overwhelming when you actually sit down and look at it.

my buddy who got me into the hobby has his basic DXCC and hes always talking about chasing new ones and i think i want to do that too but then i was reading about WAS (worked all states) and that seems maybe more achievable starting out since all 50 states feels more realistic than 100 countries. WAZ im not even sure i fully understand, like the zones thing is confusing to me still.

im running a modest station, just a 100 watt radio and a wire dipole up about 30 feet in my backyard. is that enough to actually get anywhere with this stuff or do i need to upgrade before it even makes sense to chase awards. would love to hear from people who started from scratch and actually made progress

WAS is probably the best place to start honestly, especially with a wire and 100 watts. you'd be surprised how many states you can work on 40 and 20 meters even with a modest setup. i had a G5RV up maybe 25 feet when i started working toward mine and got it done in under a year. the key is just being consistent and keeping an eye on the spots on DX clusters.

DXCC is a longer haul but 100 entities isnt impossble either — you can rack up a good chunk of them just from normal operating without even trying that hard, the caribbean and europe are pretty easy gets on 20m when conditions cooperate. WAZ i'd honestly leave for later, getting your head around the ITU zones takes a bit and the award requires all 40 which means you really need to work some of the tougher ones eventually.

start logging everything from day one and get yourself an LoTW account set up if you havent already. electronic confirmations make the whole process so much easier than waiting on paper QSL cards, though i do still love getting a nice card in the mail

im kind of in the same boat as you, been licensed about a year and a half and just got my WAS confirmed on LoTW like two months ago which felt really good. honestly just start logging everything and dont overthink it — a lot of the credits just accumulate without you really trying once you get into a rhythm of getting on the air regularly.

the zones thing for WAZ did confuse me too for a while. basically the world is divided into 40 CQ zones and you need a confirmed contact from each one. some zones are tiny and rare so that award takes a while. DXCC is the one most people seem to chase hardest though, theres something addictive about watching that entity count go up