so ive been running FT8 for a while now and its fine, great even for making contacts when the band is rough, but i keep reading people talk about JS8Call like its this whole different thing and i cant quite figure out if its actually better for weak signal work or if its more of a... chat mode? like the way people describe it sounds like its slower and more conversational but im not sure if thats actually an advantage for like true weak signal dx or if FT8 just wins there because of the shorter transmission windows and better sensitivity numbers.

my setup is pretty modest, ic-7300 into a fan dipole up maybe 25 feet, so im not exactly running a pileup station here. been playing with WSJT-X on 40m mostly, sometimes 20m if the band cooperates. just trying to understand where JS8Call actually fits vs FT8/FT4 because i feel like im missing the point of it whenever i read about it.

they really are different tools honestly. FT8 is optimized for making contacts — exchange callsigns and signal reports and move on, thats basically it. the decoder sensitivity is insane, something like -24dB SNR if i remember right, which is why it works so well when the band seems totally dead.

JS8Call is more like... texting over radio. you can have actual conversations, relay messages through other stations, send position reports, all that. its based on FT8's encoding so it has similar weak signal capability but the tradeoff is each transmission is longer so you need the path to hold up for more time. for pure contact making FT8 wins pretty much every time but if you want to actually say something to someone or do mesh-type messaging JS8Call is the one. i use both depending on what im trying to do.

yeah what he said, also dont sleep on PSK31 if you havent messed with it. not as weak-signal capable as FT8 obviously but theres something satisfying about having a real keyboard QSO where you can actually type out a sentence and get one back. ive had some decent dx on 20m PSK31 with pretty mediocre antennas. and RTTY still has a following especially during contests, RTTY contests can actually be really fun if you get into that kind of thing. but for your situation with a modest antenna and wanting to maximize contacts, yeah FT8 is probably doing exactly what you need it to do already.