so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for working new entities and the DX is nuts but after a while it feels like im just clicking a button and watching a computer talk to another computer. decided to try JS8Call last week after seeing it mentioned here a few times and honestly its kind of scratching that itch i didnt know i had

the thing is the decode sensitivity seems way worse than FT8 — like i was pulling in stations on FT8 at -20dB that JS8Call couldnt even see. is that just the nature of it since the bandwidth is wider and youre sending actual text? or is there a config thing im missing. running wsjt-x alongside JS8Call on the same antenna and the difference is pretty dramatic

also been messing with PSK31 a bit which feels almost retro at this point but there are still people on 14.070 if you look. curious if anyone else uses multiple digital modes or if most people just stick to FT8 and call it a day

yeah the sensitivity tradeoff is real and its basically baked into how JS8Call works. FT8 uses that super tight 8-FSK encoding with forward error correction optimized for tiny bursts of data in a fixed timeslot, so it can pull signals out of the noise floor that would be invisible to almost anything else. JS8Call is doing something different — its more like a slow MFSK mode carrying freeform text so the per-symbol SNR requirement is just higher. you're not gonna get -20dB copy on JS8Call and thats not a bug its a tradeoff for actually being able to say something meaningful

i run both. FT8 for DX hunting when i want a new one, JS8Call for the nets and just chatting when band conditions are garbage and phone is hopeless. there's a relay/store-forward thing in JS8Call that's pretty cool too if you dig into it, basically lets messages get passed around the network even if you cant hear the destination directly

PSK31 still works, you just gotta know when to look. early mornings on 40m sometimes has decent traffic. RTTY contest weekends are still a blast if you havent tried those

same boat here, FT8 got kinda boring after a while honestly. js8call feels more like actual radio if that makes sense. i dont worry too much about the SNR numbers and just work what i can hear. the heartbeat beacon feature is neat for propagation stuff too