so ive been running FT8 for about 8 months now and i love the weak signal stuff, managed a bunch of DX i never wouldve touched on SSB with my setup (100w and a dipole up about 25ft, not exactly impressive). but i keep seeing people mention JS8Call like its this whole other thing and i finally downloaded it last weekend to mess around.

honest question though — is JS8Call actually meant to replace the ragchew side of things or is it more of an emcomm/store-forward deal? i tried calling CQ a few times on 40m and got basically nothing for like an hour, then one guy came back but his signal was way down in the noise and i could barely follow the conversation because messages kept getting missed and we had to repeat stuff. felt clunky compared to just hopping on PSK31 which at least feels like an actual conversation even if it needs a better signal.

maybe im just not patient enough or hitting the wrong times. does JS8Call even have an active user base on 40 or should i be checking different bands

yeah JS8Call has a bit of a learning curve mostly because the user base is pretty spread out compared to FT8 which basically everyone piled into. the activity tends to cluster around certain nets and times rather than just being a free-for-all like FT8. 40m does have some traffic but honestly 80m late evening has been better in my experience, especially for domestic stuff. the store and forward relay thing is actually pretty neat once you get the hang of it, messages can hop through other stations even if you cant hear the destination directly. but if you just want a casual keyboard to keyboard chat then yeah PSK31 or even Olivia makes more sense, the conversational flow is just better for that use case. JS8Call kind of sits in this weird middle ground and i think a lot of people havent figured out what they want to use it for yet including me honestly.

i had the same frustration when i first tried it. ended up just going back to FT8 and occasionally PSK31 when i want to actually talk to somebody. RTTY contesting is still a thing if you havent tried that, completely different vibe but theres actually people there at the right times and the exchanges go fast which i find kind of satisfying even though its technically older tech than everything else were talking about.