so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for working DX and filling the log but honestly it feels kind of hollow after a while, like you're just exchanging signal reports with a robot. someone at my local club mentioned JS8Call as a way to actually have a QSO without being there at the keyboard every 15 seconds hitting transmit.

i set it up last weekend and poked around on 40m for a few hours. found a couple guys chatting but it was hard to follow who was talking to who, the interface confused me at first. i do like the idea of store-and-forward messaging though, left a couple msgs at a relay node which was kinda cool. battery backed node at some guy's QTH in Vermont picked it up even though he wasnt online.

my question is more like — is there actually an active community using it or is it kind of a ghost town most of the time? and does the weak signal performance really hold up as well as FT8 or is that kind of oversold. i tried calling CQ a few times and just got nothing back, could be band conditions though, 40m was pretty noisy that afternoon. also still have WSJT-X running on the same machine so wondering if there's any issue with both trying to use the soundcard at the same time, im on windows 10 using a SignaLink USB.

JS8Call is definitely a thinner crowd than FT8 but its not dead either. you kinda have to know when to look — 40m in the evenings US time has the most activity in my experience, and theres a small but pretty dedicated group that uses it for actual emcomm type stuff. the weak signal performance is real but it is noticeably worse than FT8, which makes sense because JS8 is designed for text messaging not just signal reports so the protocol has to carry more information. FT8's whole thing is compressing the exchange down to almost nothing which is why it works at like -20 dB.

on the soundcard thing, yeah you'll have conflicts if both are trying to grab the audio device at the same time. easiest fix is just run them on separate virtual audio cables if you want both open simultaneously, VAC or VB-Audio both work. or just close WSJT-X when you switch over. SignaLink should work fine with JS8Call, same config as FT8 basically just PTT via VOX on the SignaLink.

i went through the same thing with FT8 feeling kind of pointless after a while. tried JS8Call, liked the concept, but honestly i ended up going back to PSK31 for ragchewing. theres still a small but pretty active group on 20m around 14.070, especially on weekends, and you actually get to type real sentences back and forth in more or less real time. feels more like a real contact to me. JS8Call is cool if the store-forward relay stuff matters to you but for just having a chat PSK still does it for me. RTTY too if you want something with a bit more of a vintage feel, lots of contest activity there.