so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for racking up contacts and all that but honestly it feels more like a video game than a conversation. you just exchange grid squares and signal reports and thats it, done, move on. i started poking around JS8Call a few months back and its a totally different vibe — you can actually type stuff back and forth even if the connection is barely there.

my setup is nothing special, ic-7300 into a random wire out back, WSJT-X for the FT8 stuff and JS8Call obviously for the other. running on 40m mostly at night. the thing im trying to figure out is whether anyone actually uses JS8Call regularly enough that theres people to talk to, because the few times ive gone looking the band seems pretty quiet compared to the usual FT8 pileup on 14.074.

also tried a little PSK31 last winter and that was actually fun, felt more like an old teletype thing. does anyone still work that mode or has everyone just migrated to the WSJT stuff at this point

JS8Call has a pretty dedicated following but yeah its nowhere near the volume of FT8, thats just the reality of it. i check in on the JS8Call activity nets on 40 and sometimes 20 and theres usually a handful of people around especially evenings. the thing is the mode was kind of designed for async messaging too so people leave their stations running and you can send messages that get stored and relayed which is kinda neat if you think of it less like a contact and more like a slow email over RF.

PSK31 is not dead but its definitely quieter than it used to be. i still work it occasionally and can usually find activity on 14.070 area on weekends. the problem is when the band is even slightly noisy PSK31 just falls apart compared to FT8 or even FT4, the sensitivity difference is huge. thats the whole weak signal thing — FT8 can pull signals out of the mud that PSK31 would never decode. if you want to actually chat though and dont mind slower contacts PSK31 still has charm to it, the waterfal is fun to watch with all those little traces running.

honestly the js8call thing resonated with me too. i run ft8 a lot during contests and for dxcc chasing but sometimes i just want to actually talk to somebody you know? tried js8call a couple times and managed a few back and forth exchanges on 20m, wasnt blazing fast but it worked and it felt like an actual qso.

one thing though — make sure your clock sync is dialed in tight no matter which mode your using. had some weird decode issues with ft4 a while back and spent like two hours messing with audio levels before i realized my pc clock had drifted like 3 seconds. felt pretty dumb about that