so ive been licensed about 3 years now and mostly just done local stuff and some casual HF but i finally got bit by the DX bug pretty hard last month. worked a bunch of stuff during a big pileup weekend and started logging everything more carefully and then i looked at my log and realized i might already have like 40-something countries confirmed if i had been sending QSLs all along. kicking myself a little for not doing this sooner.

anyway i have a few questions i cant quite figure out from the ARRL website. first — for DXCC do i need the QSL card in hand or can i use LoTW confirmations? i know LoTW is a thing but im not totally clear on whether its treated the same as a paper card for the award application. second question is about deleted entities — theres a few things in my log from like portable operations in weird places and im not sure if they count or not. third and this might be dumb but does WAS and DXCC use the same log or do i have to submit separately for each one. feel like im overcomplicating this but i want to make sure i do it right before i start aggressively chasing stuff.

LoTW confirmations absolutely count for DXCC, in fact a lot of serious DXers rely almost entirely on LoTW now because its faster and you dont have to deal with cards getting lost in the mail or waiting six months for a bureau card to show up. when you apply through the ARRL you can submit electronically using your LoTW account and it pulls the confirmed QSOs right in. paper QSLs still work too and some entities basically require them because the rare DX stations never upload to LoTW, but for your everyday stuff LoTW is totally fine.

on the deleted entities question — it depends. some deleted entities still count toward DXCC and some dont, the ARRL maintains a list. generally if a contact was made while the entity was still valid (meaning before it got deleted or merged with something else) it counts. worth checking the deleted entities list on the ARRL DXCC page specifically.

and yeah WAS and DXCC are separate applications, separate fees, separate tracking. your log is your log obviously but you go through different processes for each award. WAS you can also do through LoTW which makes it pretty painless if you have the confirmations already sitting there. good luck man, 40 entities is a solid start, it gets addictive fast.

im kind of in the same boat as you honestly, just started paying more attention to this stuff this year. one thing i learned the hard way is to get on LoTW as soon as possible and upload your whole log going back as far as you can because a lot of stations upload their logs retroactively and you might already have confirmations waiting that you dont know about yet. i uploaded my log from the past two years and had like 15 confirmations show up within a week from stations i had completely forgotten i worked. also look into WAZ too (worked all zones) its another fun one to chase alongside DXCC and some of the contacts overlap so youre kind of working toward multiple things at once.