so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and i love it for the DX chase but honestly it gets kind of hollow after a while. you exchange signal reports and grid squares and thats... it. i started poking around JS8Call because someone at the club mentioned it lets you actually type back and forth in something resembling a real QSO and i set it up last weekend but the waterfall looks totally dead on 40m at the times im operating (usually late afternoon, maybe 5-7pm local)

is JS8Call just not very populated compared to FT8 or am i doing something wrong with the frequency? i was sitting on 7.078 which i thought was the JS8 calling freq but maybe thats wrong. also my decode rate seems lower than FT8 even accounting for the slower mode — not sure if thats a soundcard issue or just how it is. running an IC-7300 into a dipole, nothing fancy

i still fire up WSJT-X for FT8 when i want to work a new grid but would really like to find something with a bit more... substance i guess. even PSK31 back in the day felt more like a real contact than modern FT8 grinding

7.078 is right for JS8Call, thats the standard calling freq for that band. the problem is activity is just way lower than FT8, its not even close. you might sit there for 20 minutes and see nothing then suddenly 3 or 4 stations pop up. late afternoon on 40 can be hit or miss depending on where you are — i find evenings after 8 or 9pm local are better when the band opens up more regionally

the decode rate thing is normal, JS8 is inherently slower and the signal structure is different so you wont get the same wall of decodes. but when you do connect with someone its a totally different experience. had a 45 minute back and forth with a guy in Montana last winter talking about antenna projects, felt like a real radio conversation. worth sticking with it honestly, just dont expect FT8-level activity

yeah PSK31 nostalgia is real lol. i ran that mode heavily like 2009-2014 and there were always people to ragchew with on 14.070. now that waterfall is mostly quiet except for some RTTY contest activity. FT8 kind of ate everything

i dont use JS8 much but from what i understand the Relay and group messaging stuff is the interesting part, not just the one on one contacts. theres some people using it for mesh-ish emcomm type experiments too which is kind of cool. might be worth looking at the JS8Call groups.io list to find when people are scheduling activity on your band