so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for working new entities and all that but honestly it feels like a slot machine more than amateur radio sometimes. you click a call, exchange signal reports, 73, done. i get why people like it but im starting to want something with a little more... substance i guess.

somebody at my club mentioned JS8Call and i looked into it a bit, seems like its built on the same weak signal stuff as FT8 but you can actually type messages back and forth? ran it for a few evenings on 40m and did get a couple short QSOs but i found myself waiting forever between responses and sometimes the other station just drops off mid conversation which is frustrating.

i guess my question is whether thats just normal for JS8Call or if im doing something wrong with timing. also curious if PSK31 is even worth bothering with anymore for ragchewing, i used to use it back in the day and it was pretty decent but havent touched it in years. feels like the waterfalls on 14.070 are a lot more empty than they used to be.

JS8Call timing thing is just how it works unfortunately. the turnaround is much slower than FT8 by design because it's optimized for weak signal copy not speed, so yeah you're gonna have gaps. the normal heartbeat mode i think is like 15 seconds per transmission which sounds fast but when you're going back and forth on a conversation it adds up. there's a turbo mode that speeds it up but then you lose some of the weak signal advantage.

as for PSK31, honestly it's not dead but it's pretty sparse. i still hear a few guys on 14.070 on weekends and sometimes late evenings on 40. the problem is critical mass — everyone left for FT8 and PSK31 never recovered. VARA and winlink stuff pulled away a lot of the people who wanted actual text exchange too. if you want ragchewing on a digital mode and dont mind the slower pace, JS8Call is probably your best bet right now. stick with it, find the watering holes, some guys are on there pretty regularly.

RTTY is still worth a look if you havent tried it, especially during contests. totally different vibe from FT8 — its noisy and old fashioned and i kind of love it for that reason. not gonna help you have a ragchew either but its satisfying in a different way than clicking through FT8 QSOs. just throwing that out there since you mentioned wanting more than FT8.