so ive been on FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for working dx and racking up contacts but it kind of feels like youre just exchanging signal reports with robots. someone at my club mentioned JS8Call as a way to actually talk to people using weak signal stuff and i set it up last weekend but honestly im not sure im doing it right or if theres just nobody on.

i was running about 25 watts into a dipole on 40m around 7.078 and i could see a few signals on the waterfall but nobody was responding to my CQ and i couldnt tell if i was just too weak or if the timing was off or what. with FT8 at least WSJT-X tells you if youre decoded. JS8Call feels a lot more freeform which i guess is the point but also makes it harder to figure out whats going wrong.

also is PSK31 basically dead now or do people still use it? i remember reading about it years ago before i got licensed and it seemed cool for actual keyboard to keyboard stuff. just wondering if theres any mode where you can like, have a real qso with someone who isnt just firing off a macro

JS8Call definitely has a learning curve compared to FT8, mostly because you have to actually be patient and watch for activity rather than just clicking a callsign. the heartbeat feature helps a lot once you get it configured — basically it lets the software announce your presence automatically so other stations know youre around even if you step away. 7.078 should be active but honestly activity levels vary a ton by time of day and band conditions. i usually have better luck on 40m JS8Call in the evenings, like after 0100z or so when the band settles down a bit.

PSK31 isnt totally dead but its definitely quieter than it used to be. 14.070 on 20m still has some life in it on weekends. the thing about PSK31 is you really can have a flowing conversation, people will talk about their antenna setups and the weather and whatever for 20 minutes, its actually kind of nice. you need a pretty decent signal though, its not going to punch through like FT8 will. if weak signal is your main concern FT8 or JS8Call will always win that game.

RTTY is also worth a look if you want something with a bit more personality than FT8 but still works reasonably well. its mostly contests these days but outside of contests you can find people ragchewing on RTTY, especially on 20 and 40. the decoding is not as forgiving as PSK31 but theres something satisfying about it, feels more old school.

but yeah to your actual question about JS8Call — i think a lot of people leave it running in the background kind of passively so dont expect fast responses. sometimes i send a CQ and walk away for 20 minutes and come back to a reply. its a different pace than FT8 for sure