so ive been running FT8 for about two years now and yeah its great for working new entities and all that but honestly after a while it starts to feel like i'm just clicking a button and watching the computer do everything. not really what i got into ham radio for

been reading about JS8Call and it seems like it might scratch that itch a bit more since you can actually have like a real conversation instead of the 73 and done thing. but i'm also wondering if there's enough activity on it to make it worth reconfiguring everything. i run a KX3 into a dipole and WSJT-X is already dialed in pretty well, decode rates are decent, so there's something to be said for not messing with what works

the other thing is i tried PSK31 a few years back before i got into the WSJT stuff and remember liking the feel of it but the activity on 20m seemed thin even then. is that just a propagation thing or did FT8 basically kill PSK31 entirely at this point

anyone actually use JS8Call regularly, like do you have people you schedule skeds with or is it just kind of random hunting around the dial hoping someone shows up

JS8Call is genuinely fun but yeah you kind of have to go in with the right expectations. it's not like FT8 where you just open the software and there's 40 signals on the waterfall immediately. you do have to hunt a bit and honestly most of my contacts on there are guys i already know from other modes or from the JS8Call groups on the usual social media stuff

the heartbeat feature is nice though, basically the software will auto-respond to certain queries even when youre not at the radio which feels weird at first but its actually pretty useful for store-and-forward type stuff. i've had messages sitting there waiting for me when i came back to the shack which is kind of a novelty

PSK31 is not dead but it's definitely on life support. i'll still hear activity on 14.070 occasionally, usually when solar conditions are mediocre and guys are looking for something that works better than phone but dont want to deal with FT8. the decoding is more satisfying somehow, watching the text scroll in real time feels more like a conversation than a grid exchange

ft8 killed psk31, rtty, hell it basically killed most of the hf digital scene if we're being honest. i still fire up fldigi sometimes just to see whats there and its pretty sparse compared to 2015 or so. the efficiency argument makes sense technically but the hobby lost something in the trade i think

js8call is on my list to try, just havent gotten around to it. curious what frequencies you're finding the most activity on