so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for chasing DX and all that but honestly it feels like a slot machine sometimes, you decode, you call, you maybe get a 73 and thats it. no actual exchange of anything meaningful. started looking at JS8Call because it seems like you can actually like... talk to someone? but the SNR performance is supposedly worse than FT8 and i cant figure out if thats a dealbreaker or not for my setup.

running an IC-7300 into a 40m doublet at about 30 feet, mostly operating in the evenings on 40 and sometimes 20. propagation here has been decent lately but im not exactly on a hilltop. anyone gone from FT8 over to JS8Call and actually stuck with it? does the relay stuff work in practice or is it mostly theoretical on a low-traffic mode?

also mildly curious if PSK31 is just completely dead at this point or if theres still activity somewhere on 20m during the day. used to see it occasionally when i was just listening around but havent checked in a while

JS8Call is genuinely worth trying if you actually want to exchange information rather than just log a grid square. the relay functionality does work but you kind of need to be patient and understand that the network is sparse compared to FT8 — you're not going to fire it up and immediately have 40 stations decoding you. on a good evening on 40m i usually see maybe 15-20 stations in the activity window, sometimes more during a net, and ive had actual back and forth conversations that lasted 20-30 minutes which honestly felt more like ham radio to me than FT8 ever did.

the SNR thing is real, JS8Call runs at something like -24dB versus FT8's -21dB or so, so you do give up a little but in practice on 40m with your setup i doubt you'd notice it most of the time. where it starts to matter is on marginal paths or really weak DX type stuff, for that FT8 is still king. but for domestic rag chewing or store-and-forward messaging it's hard to beat. KN4CRD wrote a pretty good summary of the different speed modes (normal, slow, turbo) and when to use each if you search the JS8Call groups.io list.

PSK31 — honestly still some activity on 14.070 area during the day, i worked a handful of stations last month just scanning around. not what it was in like 2010 but not completely dead either. RTTY contest weekends still bring people out too.

yeah i went through this exact same thing last winter. FT8 just started feeling hollow after a while, like you said, slot machine is exactly the right word for it. switched most of my digital time to JS8Call and havent really looked back for casual operating. still fire up WSJT-X for contests or if i want to work a specific DX entity but day to day JS8Call scratches the itch better.

one thing i'll say is give yourself a few sessions before judging it, the first time i sat down with it i was confused by the interface and didnt really understand how the heartbeat beaconing worked or why my messages werent getting responses. once it clicked it made more sense. also the 40m JS8Call calling frequency is 7.078 i think, make sure you're actually on the right freq cause i wasted like a week wondering why i wasnt hearing anyone