so ive been running FT8 for about two years now and i get it, its great for working new entities and all that, the weak signal stuff is genuinely impressive, i worked ZL on 40m with like 3 watts last winter which still kind of blows my mind. but theres this part of me that misses actual qsos. like i want to actually talk to somebody not just exchange grid squares and signal reports.

someone on the local repeater mentioned JS8Call and i set it up last week. its definitely slower and the bands feel quieter on it but i had a legit back and forth conversation with a guy in colorado for maybe 20 minutes yesterday and it reminded me why i got into this hobby in the first place. the SNR performance is supposed to be close to FT8 right? maybe not quite as deep in the noise but close enough for most situations.

my question is really whether theres a community there worth investing time in, or is it kind of a ghost town outside of certain hours. i was on 14.078 for a while and saw maybe 8-10 stations. compared to FT8 thats nothing but maybe thats fine if theyre actually there to chat. also does anybody run JS8Call on 40 or 80 for regional stuff, im in the midwest so those bands might be more useful for me than 20m

yeah JS8Call community is smaller but honestly the people on there tend to actually want to ragchew which is the whole point. i run it on 7.078 in the evenings and usually find a few guys. not wall to wall like FT8 but its not dead either. weekends are better. the SNR threshold is around -24dB if i remember right so not FT8 level but still pretty solid for marginal conditions. worth keeping WSJT-X open on another slice of spectrum at the same time if your radio can do split stuff, no reason you cant do both

i had the same feeling about FT8 honestly. worked like 140 countries in a year and then just kind of... stopped caring? felt like watching a machine do it for me. tried PSK31 for a while which is more conversational but you really need decent conditions for it, the moment the band gets choppy its rough. JS8Call sits in a weird middle ground but i think thats actually what makes it interesting. havent tried 80m JS8 but i imagine itd be good for regional evening stuff, might fire it up this weekend and see whats happening on there