okay so ive been licensed about 8 months now and ive been doing a lot of HF work, mostly on 40m and 20m, and people keep talking about DXCC and WAS and WAZ and honestly i thought i understood them but the more i read the more confused i get. like i thought DXCC was just about working 100 countries but then theres mixed mode and band endorsements and all these different levels and i dont even know where to start logging things properly to eventually submit for credit.

right now im just using WSJT-X and logging to HAMRS and i think my QSOs are going to LoTW eventually but im not 100% sure the workflow is set up right. can you even get DXCC credit from FT8 contacts or is that only for phone/CW guys. sorry if this is a dumb question i just dont want to waste a year of logging and then find out none of it counts

not a dumb question at all, this stuff confused me for years honestly. so yes FT8 absolutely counts for DXCC, WAS, all of it - the ARRL recognizes digital modes and LoTW is really the key piece of the whole thing. as long as your WSJT-X is configured to upload to LoTW (you need your station certificate set up through tqsl) then youre golden. each confirmed QSL in LoTW that matches an entity or state on the other end counts toward the respective award.

my suggestion for where to start - just go for basic DXCC first, 100 confirmed entities. its the most satisfying early milestone imo and you probably already have a good chunk of them without realizing it. WAS is fun too but honestly harder in some ways because you need all 50 states confirmed and some of the less active ones like ND or MT can be a real pain to snag. WAZ is the zone award, 40 CQ zones, and that one gets tricky because some zones barely have any activity. id just focus on logging everything cleanly and let the totals build naturally, you can worry about submitting for the actual award certificate later when you hit the thresholds

yeah what he said about LoTW is right. also worth knowing that once you hit 100 entities confirmed in LoTW you can apply for DXCC online directly through the ARRL website, they charge a small fee but you dont have to mail in paper cards anymore which used to be the whole thing back in the day. i chased DXCC the old fashioned way with physical QSLs in the 90s and it was like a part time job keeping track of it all lol

one thing i'd add - dont stress too much about which award to chase, honestly the DX chasing itself is the fun part. the awards are just a nice side effect. i've got DXCC on like 6 bands now and WAS on 3 and i still get excited every time i work a new one even if its a duplicate