ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and im slowly starting to figure out this whole contact confirmation thing but honestly its still pretty confusing to me. like i understand the basic idea that you want to confirm a contact with the other station but theres so many different ways to do it now and i dont really know which ones count for awards and which ones people actually bother with anymore.

so i signed up for LoTW a while back because everyone said thats what you need for DXCC and i did the whole process with the certificate and everything, and ive been uploading my logs from WSJT-X after FT8 sessions. seems to work ok. but then someone at my club mentioned eQSL and said some awards accept that instead, and someone else said paper cards are still the only real way to confirm for some things. now im just kind of lost.

do most people use all three? or pick one? and do people still actually send paper cards in the mail for regular contacts or is that mostly just a DX thing now. i dont want to be rude and not send one if someone is expecting it but i also dont want to spend a bunch of money on postage for every qso i make on ft8

totally understand the confusion, i went through the same thing when i got back into the hobby a few years ago after a long break and everything had changed from what i remembered.

short version - LoTW is what you need for DXCC and most of the major ARRL awards, its the most trusted system because of how the certificates work. eQSL is accepted for some other awards like the ones through eQSL itself and a handful of others, but not DXCC. paper cards are still needed for some rare DX entities where the operator uploads to neither system, and honestly some old timers just wont confirm any other way.

for FT8 specifically most people just do LoTW and dont bother with paper at all, the volumes are too high and the contacts happen so fast nobody really expects a card. if you work someone on a ragchew on 40m SSB thats a different vibe, you might get a card in the mail and its nice to send one back. but dont stress about it for digital modes, most guys doing FT8 are just uploading logs automatically.

i use all three personally but only because its not much extra effort once your log is set up to export. ClubLog can push to LoTW and eQSL automatically, so i just let it do its thing. paper cards i only send when someone specifically requests via the bureau or sends me one first.

yeah what he said about FT8 and paper cards is right, nobody really expects them for digital contacts. i did send a few when i first started just because i thought i was supposed to and i think only one person ever sent one back lol

one thing i'll add - the QSL bureau through ARRL is worth looking into if you do want to send and receive paper cards without paying international postage every time. you basically send a big batch to them and they sort and forward everything. its slow, like sometimes cards take a year or more to arrive, but its way cheaper than sending cards directly overseas. i got a stack of cards from the bureau last spring from contacts i made in like, just sitting in my mailbox one day which was kind of cool actually.