so ive been on FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for working new grids and all that but honestly after a while it starts feeling like a slot machine more than ham radio. you click, you wait, you get a confirmation, repeat. im not complaining about it exactly but i wanted something with more... actual communication happening.

tried JS8Call a few weeks ago and its definitely more like a real qso but the waterfall is pretty sparse compared to FT8. i run about 30w into a dipole up maybe 25 feet and i can hear people but responses are slow or nonexistent sometimes. not sure if its my setup, the time of day, or if the mode itself just has way fewer users now. also the timing windows confuse me a bit — i know you can set different speeds but im not sure which one most people use for general rag chew type stuff.

also been messing with PSK31 lately and honestly that one i kind of love, theres something nice about actually typing a real sentence and having someone on the other end type back in near real time. propagation has to cooperate though and i feel like 40m is the only band where i can reliably find activity on it anymore.

anyway curious what other people are running for digital outside the FT8 grind. RTTY seems like its mostly contests at this point? or am i wrong about that

you're not wrong about RTTY honestly, outside of the big contests like CQWW RTTY or the ARRL one its pretty quiet. i'll occasionally hear some traffic on 20m but its sparse. that said when a RTTY contest is running its actually a blast if you haven't tried it, very different feel from FT8 contesting because you're actually decoding readable text flying by on screen.

on the JS8Call thing — normal speed is what most people seem to use for casual stuff, slow mode is more for really weak signal situations where you're willing to wait. the userbase is definitely smaller than FT8 but the JS8Call HQ frequencies are worth hanging around, 7.078 on 40m gets some activity especially evenings. your 30w and dipole is probably fine, i work people with similar setups. i think the mode rewards patience more than power honestly.

PSK31 i agree with you completely, theres still a small but dedicated crowd on it. 14.070 area on 20m and yeah 40m when the bands cooperate. fldigi handles it well and once you get the AFC locked in its a pretty solid mode. the narrow bandwidth is nice too when you're running low power.

yeah the FT8 slot machine feeling is real lol. i went through that phase too. what pulled me back into actually enjoying digital was honestly just joining a few JS8Call nets, theres a guy that runs one on 40m on sunday evenings and once you're in a group it feels way more like ham radio. took me a while to find it though, the mode doesnt exactly advertise itself well.

one thing i will say — if weak signal operating is what you're into, have you looked at WSPR at all? its not really a conversation mode obviously but running it in the background while youre doing other stuff and then checking wsprnet to see where your signal went is kind of addicting. i once got spotted in New Zealand on 100mw from my attic antenna and just sat there staring at the screen for like a minute. totally different vibe than FT8 but scratches a similar itch.