so ive been running FT8 for about a year and a half now and i get it, it does what it does, contact logged, move on. but lately ive been trying JS8Call because i actually want to talk to people not just exchange grid squares and signal reports and then never hear from them again.

problem is i feel like im missing something with JS8Call. the timing windows confuse me a little, like sometimes i see a station calling CQ and i reply and then nothing, and i cant tell if they heard me or just moved on or what. also not sure if im supposed to be watching the waterfall the same way i do in WSJT-X or if its a completely different workflow. my signal reports look fine, im running about 50w into a dipole up maybe 35 feet, works fine for FT8 so i dont think its an antenna issue.

also while im at it — does anyone actually use PSK31 anymore? i fired up fldigi the other night and called CQ for like 45 minutes on 14.070 and heard exactly one station, a Brazilian guy who disappeared after two overs. feels like a ghost town compared to what it used to be. not complaining just wondering if thats everyones experience or if im on at the wrong time.

yeah JS8Call is a different beast, the workflow is more like actual keyboard to keyboard chat so you kinda have to get out of the FT8 mindset where everything is automated. one thing that trips people up is that JS8Call has multiple speed modes, normal slow fast and turbo i think, and if you're not on the same speed as the other station you'll see their signal but the decode wont work right. worth checking what mode the other guy is running before you reply.

as for PSK31, honestly yeah it's pretty quiet these days. 40m seems better than 20m for finding activity, at least in my experience, but even then you're not going to find the wall to wall signals we had like 10-15 years ago. FT8 ate everything's lunch basically. i still fire up RTTY during contests and that's still pretty active but outside of contests it's sparse too.

the JS8Call thing with no response might just be propagation timing, ive had that happen a lot where i can see someone fine for a few minutes and then the band shifts and they're gone before the QSO gets anywhere. also some operators set JS8Call to only respond to directed messages not CQ replies so that could be part of it. i dunno i find it frustrating sometimes too but when it works and you actually get a real back and forth going it's way more satisfying than FT8 ever felt to me personally