so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and i get the appeal, the weak signal stuff is genuinely impressive, pulled contacts at -20dB that i never would have made on SSB. but lately ive been reading about JS8Call and people keep saying its better for actual communication vs just exchange-style contacts. i tried it for a few weeks and honestly the activity seemed way lower on the bands i checked (mostly 40m and 20m), like id see maybe 4-5 stations vs the wall of FT8 signals.

what im trying to figure out is whether its worth keeping JS8Call running alongside WSJT-X or if im just splitting attention for no real gain. i do some ARES stuff locally so the idea of a more robust weak signal chat mode is interesting but i cant tell if the activity is just low in my area or if the mode itself has kind of stalled out development wise. also does anyone run PSK31 still, i was reading old posts from like 2005 that made it sound like the best thing ever and i tried it once and the waterfall was basically empty

JS8Call is a different beast than FT8, like fundamentally different purpose. FT8 is basically a automated contact machine, you log the exchange and move on. JS8Call lets you actually type back and forth, slow but it works deep into the noise. the thing is yeah the activity is lower but that's kind of by design, it's not trying to compete with FT8 for pile-up style operating.

for ARES stuff it actually makes a lot of sense because you can relay messages, do store-and-forward, query other stations, stuff that FT8 literally cannot do. i keep it running on a separate rig on 40m during the day and honestly i see more activity than you might expect once you're on the right frequencies, check the JS8Call info page for the calling frequencies because a lot of people stick to those. PSK31 is mostly dead yeah, i fire it up occasionally on 20m and find something but its nothing like it was. rtty contest weekends are still fun though if you havent tried those

psk31 is not totally dead just uh... resting. i worked a guy in ukraine on it last month which surprised me. but yeah FT8 ate its lunch pretty thoroughly. the JS8Call thing i keep meaning to set up properly, i downloaded it twice and never really committed. sounds like for emcomm it could be genuinely useful but my local group is still arguing about winlink vs everything else so who knows when we'd actually use it