so ive been running FT8 for maybe two years now and i love it for DX and filling in band slots but lately ive been feeling like theres something missing. like yeah you make the contact and log it but theres no actual conversation happening right? someone mentioned JS8Call to me at a club meeting and i finally installed it last week and spent a few evenings poking around on 40m.

its definitely a different vibe. slower, more like actual back and forth, and the weak signal performance is still really impressive even though its not quite FT8 level. i talked to a guy for like 45 minutes about his antenna setup and it felt more like what i got into ham radio for in the first place. the interface is a little rough around the edges still but nothing i cant deal with.

curious if anyone else has kind of moved in this direction or if youre still mostly FT8/FT4 for everything. also does anyone still run PSK31 regularly because i feel like that basically died when FT8 came along and i kind of miss it too

yeah PSK31 is pretty much a ghost town now on most bands, which is a shame because i always liked it. you could actually have a real conversation, exchange signal reports that meant something, talk about your rig or whatever. FT8 is great but its basically automated at this point, half the contacts i make my radio is doing everything while im getting coffee.

JS8Call i tried for a while but honestly the activity level was kind of frustrating on my end, maybe depends on your region. 40m seems like the best bet. the store and forward messaging stuff is neat in theory especially for emcomm use cases but i never really got a ragchew going the way you describe. might give it another shot on weekends when im not contesting.

RTTY is another one that still has decent activity because of the contests but outside of RTTY Roundup and a few others its hard to find anyone. its kind of sad honestly. the waterfall on 14.080 used to be packed.

just chiming in because im kind of in the same boat as you. been on FT8 a while, works great, but yeah its not really operating in the traditional sense. more like data collection lol. i havent tried JS8Call yet but this thread is making me want to. whats the typical frequency you were using on 40m, i dont want to just spin the dial looking for it