Brian Wilson

so ive been licensed for about 3 years now and mostly just did local stuff and some contests but a buddy of mine at the club keeps talking about DXCC and i got curious and started looking into it and now im kind of down a rabbit hole haha
from what i understand you need 100 confirmed entities for the basic award and then theres endorsements for different bands and modes and then theres WAS for states and WAZ for zones and they all kind of stack on top of each other? i submitted a couple QSLs through LoTW last week and got a few credits confirmed already which was exciting honestly
my main question is really about the best way to approach this — like should i just work everything i can hear and let the credits pile up naturally or is there some strategy to it? i have a pretty modest setup, IC-7300 and a dipole up about 30 feet, live in a suburb so not ideal but ive already worked like 40 or 50 entities i think just messing around over the past couple years. wondering if those old QSOs can still count if the other station uploaded to LoTW

yeah i had the same confusion when i first started checking into nets. what helped me was just listening to how the more experienced guys did it. our net control actually reminded everyone about proper ID procedure a few weeks back which i thought was cool, wasnt preachy about it just mentioned it casually. i think most nets are pretty forgiving especially for newer folks as long as you're making the effort.

so basically you want to do LoTW for anything that counts toward ARRL awards, thats just the reality of it. the DXCC desk only accepts LoTW confirmations or physical cards these days and most serious DXers upload pretty quickly after a session. getting your certificate set up is a pain the first time, all that trien signing stuff, but you only do it once.
eQSL is kind of its own thing, some people love it some people dont bother. the cards look nice and theres a lot of casual ops on there but its not accepted for most of the major awards so take that for what its worth. i still have an account and check it now and then.
paper bureau cards i havent done in probably ten years honestly. they pile up for months before the ARRL ships a batch and half the time the card you want never shows up anyway. some rare DX entities still mostly do paper though so you cant ignore it completely if you're chasing DXCC
my advice is just get LoTW set up now, upload after every session with TQSL, and treat eQSL as a nice bonus. you dont need to pick one the other station doesnt have to be on the same system at the same time, LoTW matches automatically when both sides upload

i was in the same spot like two years ago and honestly just picking one goal at a time helped me not go crazy. i did WAS first because it felt more achievable and gave me a reason to get on the air consistently. once i had that confirmed through LoTW i had a lot more confidence going after DXCC. some guys do everything simultaneously and thats fine but for me having one concrete thing to work toward kept it fun instead of stressful

so anyway the app i ended up liking is Ham Radio Deluxe's DX cluster view but thats because i was already using that software. if you're on your phone just messing around, DX Toolbox is decent and i think there's a free version. the delay thing is real though, ive tuned to spots that were only 5 min old and still missed the guy completely. some of it is propagation just closing on you and some of it is the pileup already died down. you kind of get a feel for it after a while which spots are worth chasing and which ones are probably dead already based on the band and time of day

Yeah I've noticed it too, especially during peak hours on weekends. I usually wait until monday morning to upload my logs now, seems to work better then. For bulk uploads you can use ADIF files if you have logging software that exports them - much easier than manual entry.