so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and honestly its great for what it is but its basically just an exchange machine, you cant really have a conversation. someone at my local club mentioned JS8Call and said its more like actual messaging but still uses weak signal propagation, which sounds interesting to me because i like the idea of being able to reach someone on 40m during the day when voice is basically useless here but still actually talk to them

my question is whether its actually worth setting up separately or if its just more complexity for not much payoff. i already have WSJT-X running fine with a signalink into my 7300 and i understand JS8Call is a totally different piece of software. does it conflict with anything or share the same audio interface setup. also curious how active it actually is, like are there people on there or is it a ghost town most of the time

also someone mentioned PSK31 in the same breath and i know thats older but is that still a thing people actually use or is it pretty much dead at this point

JS8Call is definitely worth trying if you want actual QSOs instead of just log entries. its basically FT8 underneath but slowed down so you can type longer messages and have a back and forth. the tradeoff is its maybe 3-4dB less sensitive than FT8 because of the wider bandwidth and shorter symbol time comparatively, so its not quite as magic but still way better than SSB on a marginal band opening

as for the audio setup, no conflicts at all if you just make sure WSJT-X isnt also trying to grab the soundcard at the same time. i have mine set up with VAC on windows and just switch which program gets the virtual cable. on linux its even easier honestly. activity is real but not FT8-level, 40m and 20m have decent traffic especially on weekends, and theres an HF email/store-forward thing called Winlink adjacent community that sometimes overlaps but JS8Call has its own spots frequency around 14.078 or so

PSK31 is not dead but its pretty thin. you'll find people on 20m around 14.070 on weekends, older guys mostly who like the fact that you can actually type in real time and see the other persons words appear character by character. its actually kind of fun for that reason but you need decent SNR, maybe -10dB or so, nowhere near FT8 territory

been using JS8Call pretty regularly on 40m evenings and yeah theres definitely people on there, its not dead. its a different vibe than FT8 for sure, more like a slow IRC chat almost. i had a 45 minute conversation with a guy in Montana last winter during a period where 40m was basically unusable for voice and it worked fine the whole time. the latency is weird to get used to, you send a message and then wait, but thats kind of the point

one thing that tripped me up at first was the heartbeat beacon thing it does automatically, worth reading up on that before you just let it run or youll be beaconing on a frequency without realizing it