ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and just got my first decent HF setup running - IC-7300 into a dipole up about 30 feet, nothing fancy. people keep mentioning DXCC and WAS and WAZ in the same breath and im honestly not sure where to even start. like do most people just work toward all of them at the same time or is there some kind of logical order that makes sense for a newer guy?

i've already worked maybe 40 states on 40m just kind of casually and i have a bunch of random DX contacts in my log that i wasnt really tracking for anything. im using WSJT-X mostly because getting signal reports on SSB has been rough, but i do get on phone sometimes. does FT8 count for all these awards or are some of them restricted to certain modes? i feel like every time i google this i get a different answer from some article thats 10 years old.

any advice appreciated, especially from people who've been through the beginner phase of chasing credits. i dont want to spend a ton of money on logging software right away if i can avoid it.

WAS is probably the most satisfying one to start with honestly, especially if you're already at 40 states without even trying. you're close enough that finishing it up would feel like a real win and it keeps your focus a bit tighter while you figure out the whole awards ecosystem. DXCC is the big one and it takes a while to understand which entities count and which dont - there's been more than a few times i thought i had a new one and it turned out the island or territory i worked counted under the same entity as something i already had.

FT8 absolutely counts for all of them, just make sure your logging is solid from the start. LOTW is the main thing you need - get that set up before anything else, seriously, because a lot of the contacts you've already made might already have confirmations sitting there waiting if the other stations uploaded. the ARRL has a thing where you can submit paper logs for old QSOs too but LOTW makes life so much easier. and honestly Log4OM is free and works great, no need to spend anything yet.

yeah what he said about LOTW, get that going asap. i waited like 6 months before setting it up and lost credit for a bunch of contacts where the other op had already uploaded and then went silent or whatever. kind of kicking myself still.

WAZ is the one that trips people up because some of the zones are genuinely hard to catch - zone 1 up in northern Canada doesnt come through super often on 40m and some of the pacific zones you basically need good conditions and a little luck. i'd say just log everything, upload to LOTW constantly, and let the award credits sort themselves out naturally. chasing them all at once isnt as overwhelming as it sounds once you're actually doing it