ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep seeing people talk about QSL cards and LoTW and eQSL and honestly im not sure which ones i actually need to bother with. like do i need all three or is one of them good enough for most purposes

i made my first few HF contacts last month and a couple people asked for my QSL card and i had to kind of awkwardly explain i dont have any yet. i do have a LoTW account that i set up when i got my callsign but i havent really uploaded anything to it yet because the whole TQSL thing confused me when i tried to figure it out

mostly i just want to be able to confirm contacts for awards eventually, DXCC being the main one im thinking about. but i also kind of want the physical cards because they look cool and it seems like part of the ham culture thing. so i guess my question is what do most people actually use day to day and is there a reason to bother with all three systems or do you just pick one

short answer is you dont necessarily need all three but each one has its place so a lot of people end up using at least two of them

for DXCC specifically you pretty much have to use LoTW or physical cards - eQSL credits dont count for DXCC which trips a lot of people up. so if thats your goal get LoTW sorted out first, its worth the headache of figuring out TQSL. once you get the certificate setup done its actually not that bad to use going forward, you just log and upload

physical cards are totally optional but yeah they really are part of the culture and some DX stations only confirm via bureau or direct mail so if you ever get into chasing rare ones youll want cards eventually. i still get a little kick out of pulling a nice card out of the mailbox from somewhere exotic. eQSL is kind of the middle ground, easy to use and some people love it, but its acceptance for major awards is limited so manage your expectations there

my suggestion - get LoTW working first since thats the most useful for awards, order a small batch of cards from one of the online printers (vista print or one of the ham-specific ones) and worry about eQSL later if at all

yeah i was in the same boat when i started and honestly i just did all three eventually because different people want different things and you cant really predict what someone will ask for when you work them

the TQSL setup really is annoying the first time, i think i had to watch a youtube video like twice before it clicked. but once its going you can set it to auto-upload if you use certain logging software and then you basically forget about it which is nice

one thing nobody told me - if you want physical cards but dont want to design your own, some of the big printers have templates specifically for ham radio cards and you can get like 200 for not a ton of money. i went through ham radio outlet actually, no wait it wasnt them, maybe QSLprinting.com or something like that. anyway they exist and its not expensive to get a small run done