ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and ive been hearing people talk about DXCC and WAS and WAZ and honestly im not totally sure how they all fit together. like are these completely separate award programs or do some of the contacts count toward multiple ones at the same time?

from what i can piece together WAS is worked all states so you need all 50 US states confirmed, DXCC is 100 countries or entities or whatever they call them, and WAZ is the zone thing? but i dont really understand what zones are exactly and how many there are.

also whats the deal with getting contacts confirmed - is LoTW the main way people do this now or do you still send paper QSL cards? i have a few paper cards from some of my early contacts but i havent really done anything with them. someone at my club mentioned i might already have credits toward WAS without even knowing it if i uploaded my log to LoTW which sounds too good to be true honestly

any help appreciated, i feel like im missing something obvious here

yeah these are all totally separate award programs but you're right that the same contact can count toward more than one of them simultaneously which is the nice part. so if you work a station in say Texas that confirms on LoTW, that could count toward WAS for the state of Texas, toward DXCC if you're a foreign station (though you're presumably in the US so maybe not), and if Texas falls in CQ zone 4 or wherever, it could tick a zone for WAZ too. the log is the log - you just apply credits differently to each program.

WAZ is 40 zones total, CQ Zones, they divide the world up kind of geographically. some zones are easy, some are genuinely hard to get because not many people operate from there. zone 2 comes to mind, northern canada, pretty sparse.

and yes LoTW is absolutely the main way now. upload your ADIF log and if the other station has also uploaded theirs and the details match up you get a confirmed QSO. your club friend is right - you may already have matches sitting there waiting. definitely get your log uploaded, took me an afternoon to figure out the certificates and stuff but its worth it.

i was in the exact same spot like two years ago and honestly just start with WAS because its the most straightforward goal if you're in the US. 50 states, done. some states are way easier than others - Wyoming and Delaware always seem to take forever for whatever reason, at least they did for me. i worked all the easy ones pretty quick and then spent months hunting the stragglers.

DXCC kinda takes over your life once you start it though fair warning lol. you hit 100 entities and think ok great and then someone mentions that the honor roll is 340+ and suddenly you're setting alarms to work some tiny island in the pacific at 3am. not that i would know anything about that