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 DXing and someone at my club mentioned i should start tracking my contacts for DXCC. i went and looked at the ARRL page and honestly it kind of overwhelmed me at first but i think i understand the basics now.

my question is basically about how the whole credit system works. like i have a bunch of contacts in my log already but i never really thought about confirmations. i use WSJT-X for FT8 mostly and i know those go to LoTW automatically if the other station is set up for it but what about stations that arent on LoTW? do i just hope they send a paper QSL eventually or is there another way to get credit for those?

also someone told me i should be chasing WAS at the same time since a lot of the states count and its not that much extra work. is that true or would i be spreading myself too thin as a newer DXer? i dont want to end up with a half-finished everything and nothing actually completed lol

any advice appreciated, this whole awards thing is new territory for me

Welcome to the rabbit hole, you will not escape lol. Seriously though the LoTW thing is the key thing to focus on first. A huge percentage of active DX stations upload to LoTW these days especially the bigger DXpeditions, so if youre doing FT8 you might already have more credits building up than you realize. Go log into LoTW and run an account search, might be a pleasant surprise.

For stations not on LoTW your options are basically paper QSL direct, through the bureau, or sometimes eQSL though ARRL doesnt accept eQSL for DXCC. The bureau is cheap but slow, can take a year or more sometimes. Direct is faster but you're paying return postage or IRCs or a green stamp depending on where the station is. Most people use a mix of all of it.

And yeah the WAS advice is solid. If youre already on 40 or 20 meters working DX you are almost certainly working US states too without thinking about it. Just make sure your logging software is set up to track everything. Ham Radio Deluxe or Log4OM or whatever you use should handle both at once no problem.

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been chasing DXCC for about 8 months now and just hit 87 confirmed last week which felt really good. the LoTW thing really is where most of your confirmations will come from, i was suprised how many stations are on there now.

one thing i wish someone had told me earlier is to just keep working everything you hear even if you dont think it counts or you already have that entity confirmed. worked a station twice on different bands and got two credits from it for band-specific awards which i didnt even know was a thing at first. WAZ is worth looking at too if you want another goal to work toward, zones are a bit different way of thinking about it compared to entities or states