Rachel Williams

welcome to the hobby. yeah that feeling of hearing your own call come back at you never really goes away, even after years of operating. get yourself on HF as soon as you can though, 2m is great but talking across the country or to another continent on a wire antenna you built yourself is something else entirely.

Honestly the bandpass filters are the most important piece and a lot of people underestimate how much bleedover between the two radios will mess with your head even if it doesn't blow anything up. If your 40m signal is getting into the 7300's front end while you're trying to copy on 15 you're fighting that the whole time and it's exhausting.
I run a 2-radio setup during CQWW and the rate difference is real but it took me a long time to get there. One thing I do that maybe sounds dumb but actually helped — I practiced outside of contests just doing SO2R with no pressure, like tuning around on a random evening just to get my hands used to the workflow without caring about score.

so the short answer is yes, LoTW confirmations absolutely count for DXCC — actually the ARRL basically built LoTW around DXCC so its really well integrated. you log your contacts, upload your ADIF to LoTW, and when the other station also uploads their log and there's a match, that becomes a confirmed credit. you dont need paper cards at all if both stations are on LoTW.
as for which award to chase first, honestly i'd say just let it happen naturally. work whatever stations you hear and over time you'll accumulate credits toward all three. DXCC needs 100 confirmed entities which takes a while but is very doable, WAS is 50 states which sounds easy but Alaska and Hawaii will make you wait, and WAZ is the 40 CQ zones which some people find trickier because zone boundaries dont follow country lines. the real trap is spending money on QSL bureau fees before you figure out if LoTW is going to cover most of your needs. get active on LoTW first, see where you stand after a few months of real operating.

just passed mine like two months ago so this is all fresh for me. i used hamstudy and also watched some youtube videos when i didnt understand why an answer was what it was, there's a guy who does breakdowns of the tech question pool and it helps when you actually want to understand the concept and not just memorize. the electrical stuff tripped me up a little at first but it clicks eventually. i think i studied maybe two weeks? passed with room to spare. the test is 35 questions and you need 26 right so its not brutal. good luck, its worth it once you have the callsign