ok so i've been licensed about 8 months now and i finally have a decent HF setup, got my general ticket back in the spring and ive been spending a lot of time on 20m just making contacts all over the place. someone in my club mentioned i should start logging seriously if i want to go for DXCC and i kind of nodded like i knew what they were talking about but honestly i went home and looked it up and now im more confused than before.

so theres DXCC which is working 100 countries, WAS which is all 50 states, and WAZ which is like all the zones? i think? but the zones thing really throws me off because i didnt even know the world was divided up that way for ham radio purposes. and then people talk about mixed vs phone vs digital endorsements and confirmed vs worked and i just... yeah. also how does lotw work with this, do i have to upload every QSO or just the ones i want to count toward the award?

i guess my real question is which one is a realistic goal for a newer guy with maybe 200 contacts logged so far, and do i need to start over with better logging or can i backfill my existing log into lotw and get credit for stuff i already worked?

don't worry, everyone goes through this exact moment of "wait what are all these awards" haha. so the short version is you can absolutely upload your existing log to LoTW right now and get credit for anything where the other station has also uploaded their log - it matches up automatically. so no, you dont need to start over, just get TQSL set up and import your adif file and let it do its thing.

as for which award to chase first, honestly WAS is probably the most satisfying early goal for a US ham because working all 50 states feels very achievable and you'll rack up a bunch of them without even trying during contest weekends. DXCC is more of a long game but 200 contacts in you might already have 30 or 40 entities without realizing it if youve been on 20m. just look at your log and see where people were coming from. WAZ is fun but some of those zones are genuinely hard to find on the air so id save that for later when youre more comfortable chasing specific stations.

the mixed vs phone vs digital thing just means you can get endorsed for working the requirement entirely on one mode, or a mix of all of them. most people start with mixed because it counts everything together.

yeah same boat as you were like a year ago, i just started uploading everything to lotw kind of randomly and then one day checked my DXCC account and i was already at 67 confirmed without really trying. the ones that dont confirm right away are usually smaller stations that dont use lotw, for those you kinda have to go the QSL card route through the bureau or direct mail which is its own whole thing.

WAZ genuinely stumped me for a while, zone 2 up in northern canada and some of the pacific zones are a real pain. but honestly just work everything you hear and sort it out later, thats my strategy anyway