so ive been running FT8 for about two years now mostly on 20m and 40m with a dipole in the attic and around 50w, and yeah it works great for getting contacts but lately i feel like its kinda... hollow? like you just exchange grid squares and signal reports and thats it, nobody actually says anything to each other

started looking at JS8Call because at least you can have a real conversation and it still has decent weak signal performance, the protocol is built on the same foundation as FT8 basically but slower and you can actually type a sentence. has anyone run both for a while and can tell me if JS8Call is actually usable for ragchewing or is it just too slow to feel natural

also curious how it compares on like actual sensitivity, i know FT8 gets down to like -24dB or whatever but does JS8Call get close to that or do you give up a lot there. running WSJT-X for FT8 right now and the waterfall setup is already there so the jump to JS8Call hopefully isnt too bad

JS8Call is genuinely usable for conversation but you have to adjust your expectations — it's not IRC, more like texting someone who replies every 30 seconds or so depending on which speed setting they're using. Normal mode is 15 seconds per transmission, slow is 30, there's a turbo mode that's faster but noisier. Most people i've talked to are running normal speed.

Sensitivity-wise you're giving up a little compared to FT8 but honestly not as much as you'd think. I've had contacts through some pretty rough conditions with maybe 10w into a PAR end-fedz. The bigger thing is there's just way fewer people on it so if you're in a rural area you might be calling CQ into the void for a while, especially on anything other than 40m or 20m. There's a relay feature that lets messages hop through other stations which is cool in theory but ive never actually needed it.

Point is if you want actual communication with weak signal capability it's probably your best option right now, FT4 is even more stripped down than FT8 so that's not gonna scratch that itch either.

i switched from ft8 to js8call for basically the same reason and yeah i like it a lot more but the activity thing is real, some days on 20m i'll sit there for an hour and maybe get two or three responses. 40m evenings are better. if you want guaranteed contacts ft8 is still king but if you want to actually talk to someone js8 is worth learning