so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and i get the appeal, weak signal propagation is genuinely impressive and watching spots pop up on pskreporter is kind of addicting. but i keep feeling like its not really a conversation, just an exchange and done. started poking around JS8Call because i heard it was designed more for actual back and forth communication and i set it up last weekend.

my question is more about the practical side of it — like is JS8Call significantly slower for making contacts across the band or is it close to FT8 in terms of what you can work. i tried it for a few hours on 40m and heard some activity but it felt pretty sparse compared to FT8. also still not totally sure what the heartbeat thing does exactly, i read the documentation and it kind of went over my head. using a IC-7300 into a dipole up about 30 feet if that matters.

also curious if anyone still runs PSK31 regularly because i fired up fldigi and found a tiny bit of activity on 20m around 14.070 but it was pretty slow going. feels like everything migrated to FT8 and left the other modes kind of empty

yeah you basically nailed it — JS8Call is intentionally slower because the encoding is more robust and its built around store-and-forward messaging rather than just signal reports. the heartbeat thing is just your station periodically broadcasting a beacon so other JS8 stations know youre there and what your grid is, its part of how the network mesh thing works. its honestly pretty cool once you get a few people in your area running it.

the activity is definitely sparser than FT8, thats just reality. i have the best luck on 40m in the evenings and sometimes 80m late night. if you want actual conversation JS8 is the way to go, i had a 20 minute back and forth with a guy in finland last winter about antenna modeling of all things, try doing that on FT8. the tradeoff is you have to be patient and sometimes just leave the radio on and walk away, someone might respond an hour later.

PSK31 isnt totally dead but youre right that its thin. i check 14.070 once in a while and occasionally find someone, but it requires both people to be there at the same time which is kinda the whole problem compared to the async stuff JS8 does

i asked myself the same thing when i got into digital modes. FT8 kind of scratches the weak signal itch but feels hollow after a while. i switched to FT4 for contests because its faster but same issue really, no actual words exchanged.

one thing nobody told me starting out — the JS8Call bands arent all the same activity level. 40m is probably your best bet for actual ragchewing but you might also try the JS8 calling freqs on 20m during good prop windows, ive caught some dx that way. also there are some organized JS8 nets that meet at scheduled times which helps a lot when its otherwise dead.