so ive been licensed about 3 years now and mostly just done local stuff and some casual HF but lately ive been getting really into chasing DX and i think i want to actually go for the DXCC award. i've got maybe 40-something entities confirmed on LoTW already just from random contacts i never really thought about, so that was a nice surprise when i looked.

my question is kind of basic i think but how strict is the ARRL about which contacts count? like if i worked someone years ago and never got the card or uploaded to LoTW, is that just gone forever or can i still chase down the confirmation somehow? and also does WAS use the same LoTW credits or is it totally separate tracking? i looked on the ARRL website but honestly it got confusing pretty fast with all the different endorsements and bands and stuff.

also someone mentioned WAZ to me at the club meeting last week and i had to pretend i knew what it was lol. is that a CQ magazine thing? seems like there are a lot of overlapping awards all chasing basically the same contacts which is kind of cool actually

yeah WAZ is CQ's thing - Worked All Zones, 40 zones worldwide. totally separate from ARRL awards but your same contacts can count for both obviously. a lot of guys chase DXCC, WAS, and WAZ all at once because the contact pool overlaps so much, just different confirmation paths.

for your old contacts - if the other station ever uploaded to LoTW you can still match up even years later, the system will find it. if they didnt then yeah youre kind of stuck unless you can track down a paper QSL card. some older ops are great about sending cards even late if you reach out via QRZ and explain the situation, worth trying for rare ones at least. i had a contact from 2019 suddenly confirm on LoTW last year because the other guy finally set up his account, so it does happen.

WAS is tracked separately in LoTW, when you apply you specify which award you're applying credits toward. same log upload, different application. just make sure your state field is filled in correctly in your logging software or it wont work right.

welcome to the rabbit hole, you probably wont sleep as much now lol. seriously though 40 entities without even trying is a decent start, some people struggle to get there. once you start actually hunting it goes faster than you'd expect especially if you get on 17 or 12 meters when there's a good opening.

one thing nobody told me when i started was to just upload everything to LoTW even contacts you dont think matter, because sometimes a station you worked casually turns out to be a deleted entity or something weird and those count differently. also join a dx club if you havent, the spotting networks and the guys who know when stuff is active makes a huge difference vs just randomly spinning the dial