so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about DXCC and WAS and all these awards and i finally decided to look into it seriously. been spending the last few weekends actually logging contacts with the intent to chase credits instead of just randomly working stations and its honestly kind of addicting.

my question is kinda basic but i cant find a straight answer - when people say they're 'working toward DXCC' do they mean just getting 100 confirmed entities or is there more to it? i have like 34 entities in my log right now but only maybe 15 confirmed through LoTW. does the confirmation have to happen before it counts or can you submit a batch later? also is WAS just all 50 states? that seems more doable for me right now since im mostly on 40m and 20m and those feel like decent bands for US contacts. anyway sorry for all the questions at once, just trying to figure out where to focus my energy

Welcome to the rabbit hole, you're never getting out lol. So yeah DXCC is 100 confirmed entities, the key word being confirmed - you cant just have them in your log, ARRL needs to see proof which is either LoTW confirmations or actual paper QSL cards you send in with your application. The good news is you can accumulate contacts over time and submit when you hit 100, there's no time limit on it. Your 34 entities is a solid start for 8 months honestly.

WAS is exactly what it sounds like, all 50 states confirmed. 40m is great for that especially in the evenings when the band opens up nicely across the country. One thing people dont always mention is that WAS and DXCC are per-band and per-mode too, so eventually you might end up chasing WAS on CW or DXCC on 15m and it kinda multiplies the fun. WAZ is another one - 40 CQ zones worldwide - thats a bit trickier but very doable once you get some antennas up. Anyway keep at it, 34 entities in 8 months with a presumably modest station is pretty respectable.

im basically in the same boat as you, got my ticket about a year ago and started seriously logging for DXCC maybe 4 months back. one thing that helped me a ton was just leaving LoTW running in the background and checking it every few days - its weirdly satisfying when a confirmation pops up from some island you worked weeks ago and you forgot about it. also look into ClubLog if you havent, it tracks your DXCC progress automatically and shows you which entities are still needed, makes it way easier to know what to look for in the pileups