ok so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and people keep telling me to chase DX and work towards awards but honestly the whole system is a bit overwhelming. like there's DXCC which is countries, WAS which is all 50 states, WAZ which is zones... and then there's like different modes and bands for each one? and LoTW confirmations and paper QSLs and bureau cards and i dont even know where to start.

my question is basically - is there a logical order to do these in? like should i get WAS first since it might be easier, or just jump into DXCC because thats kind of the big one everyone talks about? i'm running a modest setup, IC-7300 and a wire dipole up about 30 feet, so i'm not working pileups on rare ones but i've got maybe 40 states confirmed on LoTW already without really trying so i feel like WAS might be doable sooner than i thought.

also is WAZ worth it or do people mostly just do DXCC and WAS and skip zones entirely? feels like WAZ is kind of the forgotten one but maybe im wrong

honestly for your situation i'd say just let it happen naturally and don't stress too much about chasing one specific award. that said, WAS is probably the most satisfying to knock out first because 40 confirmed without trying is already really solid progress and it gives you something concrete to aim at. the remaining states tend to be the usual suspects - Delaware, Rhode Island, North Dakota, stuff like that - and they do show up on the air regularly you just gotta be paying attention.

DXCC you basically get the basic award at 100 confirmed entities and a lot of people hit that within the first year or two without even realizing how close they are. just make sure you're uploading to LoTW consistently because paper QSLs take forever and cost money. get the ARRL LoTW account set up properly if you havent already, the certificate setup is a little annoying but once its done its done.

WAZ is kind of underrated in my opinion. 40 zones, some of them are genuinely hard to work, and it requires you to really think about propagation in a different way than just chasing countries. i did it a few years back and found it more interesting than i expected. but yeah most people do DXCC and WAS first, WAZ tends to come later if at all.

same boat as you like a year ago lol. i just kind of worked everything i could and then looked up my log one day and realized i was at like 87 entities and freaked out in a good way. the awards kind of sneak up on you if you're just operating regularly. WAS took me longer actually because i kept missing like Wyoming and Vermont forever.

one thing nobody told me early on - make sure your callsign is set up on LoTW before you work a ton of stuff because you cant retroactively get credit for QSOs that werent uploaded with a valid cert. learned that the hard way with a few contacts.