ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about DXCC and WAS and WAZ and honestly i dont really understand the difference or which one makes sense to go after first. like i get that DXCC is about working 100 countries and WAS is the 50 states thing but WAZ has me confused — zones? what are zones and how do they work exactly

also i worked a guy in Japan last week on 20m which i was pretty stoked about and i logged it in LOTW but i wasnt sure if i needed to do anything else to get credit for it. do i have to apply separately for each award or does LOTW just track everything automatically once the contact confirms

my setup is pretty modest, just a G5RV in the backyard at about 25 feet and a 100w radio so i wasnt sure if i even have a realistic shot at DXCC or if thats more of a beam antenna thing

congrats on the Japan contact, thats a solid one for your first year. so LOTW doesnt automatically apply for awards, you still have to log in and submit an application through the ARRL website and pay a small fee when you're ready. but yes it does track your confirmed QSOs so once that JA station uploads their log and it matches yours youll see it show as confirmed in your account. you can literally watch your credits accumulate over time which is kind of addictive honestly

as for which award to chase first — most people find WAS a bit easier to start with because you can work stateside stations pretty much any time conditions are decent, and a lot of state qso parties make it pretty straightforward to knock out the harder states. DXCC is totally doable with a G5RV and 100 watts, dont let anyone tell you otherwise, it just takes patience and learning when to be on. WAZ is the CQ zones thing — the world is divided into 40 geographic zones and you need to work all 40. some zones are genuinely tough, like zone 1 up in the far north or zone 23 in central asia, those can take a while to find

id say just log everything, get on LOTW, and let the credits pile up naturally. you might be surprised how fast DXCC basic (100 entities confirmed) sneaks up on you if youre on regularly

yeah what he said about LOTW. i was in the same boat when i started chasing DXCC and i kept thinking it was more automated than it is lol. you basically have to go in and submit when youre ready to claim the award. the credits just sit there until you do

one thing i'd add — grab the DX spotting clusters if you havent already, like DXSummit or DX Watch, it makes finding new entities way less random. thats how i found out about a rare one from the south atlantic last spring and managed to get in the pileup. didnt work out that time but still. just having that running in the background while youre at the shack changes everything