so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for working new entities and watching the waterfall light up but after a while it starts to feel like... i dont know, like operating a vending machine? you put in the call sign and get a signal report back and thats it. whole thing is over in 90 seconds and you move on.

started playing around with JS8Call last month and its a completely different animal. yeah the signal is weaker because youre spreading it over more time but the idea that you can actually send a sentence or two back and forth is kind of refreshing. ive been running it on 40m mostly around the JS8Call calling frequencies and its slow but you can actually have a qso that feels like a qso.

curious if anyone here uses both regularly and how you split your time between them. also wondering if PSK31 is even worth revisiting at this point or if its basically dead. i see a tiny bit of activity on 20m PSK still but not much.

PSK31 isn't dead but its definitely on life support compared to what it was like 2010-2015 or so. used to be you could fire up digipan on a saturday afternoon and work 20 stations easy. now its more like you call CQ for 10 minutes and maybe get one reply if youre lucky. the signals are still incredibly efficient for the bandwidth though, 31hz wide is ridiculous when you think about it, that's part of why it punches so far above its weight for power.

on the js8 vs ft8 thing yeah i totally get what you mean about the vending machine feeling. i still use ft8 when i want to fill a band slot or chase a new one on 6m but js8call is sitting on a pi in the shack running basically all the time as kind of a background mode. its nice to just check in and see if anyones having a conversation going. rtty contests are still my favorite thing though if you want fast paced digital that feels like actual operating nothing beats a good rtty contest weekend.

ft4 is kinda the middle ground that nobody talks about enough imo. faster than ft8 so you get slightly more actual throughput in a contest situation but its still weak signal capable. i ran a bunch of ft4 during one of the NA sprints and it worked really well once you get the timing down. the 7.5 second cycles throw you off at first if youre used to ft8s 15 seconds.

js8call i tried once and couldnt really get my head around the relay/store forward stuff but i probably need to spend more time with it. seemed cool for emcomm type stuff where you might not have a direct path to where you need to talk to.