so ive been running ft8 for about two years now and i love it for the contacts but honestly its starting to feel like a slot machine. you spin the dial, watch the decodes, click the callsign, exchange signal reports and grid squares, done. its efficient i guess but theres nothing really happening between two humans.

a buddy at the club mentioned js8call and how its basically ft8 under the hood but you can actually type messages back and forth, relay stuff, store and forward when someone isnt on frequency, that kind of thing. sounds interesting but every time i try to fire it up the interface confuses me and i cant figure out if anyone is actually using it or if its just a ghost town on whatever frequency i land on.

for context im running an ic-7300 into a fan dipole up about 35 feet, wsjt-x for ft8 and ft4, and i use fldigi sometimes for psk31 when i want to feel like im actually talking to someone. so its not like im new to digital. just cant tell if js8call is worth putting the time in or if ill just end up back on 14.074 clicking contacts again.

anyone actually use it regularly and have an opinion either way?

js8call is worth it but yeah the learning curve is real and the activity thing is a genuine problem depending on when you're on and what band. 14.078 is the main watering hole and i find mornings on the east coast are pretty decent, evenings hit or miss. the store-and-forward stuff for emcomm purposes is actually pretty cool once you get your head around it — you can leave a message for someone and it'll get relayed if another station hears it and has the right settings turned on.

the interface honestly isnt that bad once you stop comparing it to wsjt-x because its doing something completely different. think of it more like a slow chatroom thats also a mesh network. i ran it alongside my normal ft8 sessions for a few weeks before it clicked. the 15 second timing periods mean youre not racing to respond and conversations actually happen even if theyre slow.

if you like psk31 for the conversation aspect js8call will probably scratch that itch better than ft8 ever could. psk31 obviously has better throughput for casual ragchewing but js8call will pull through conditions that would kill a psk31 qso, which is the whole point.

honestly i tried js8call twice and gave up both times but i think i was doing something wrong with the audio levels because my decodes were terrible. kept seeing partials and nothing completing. might have been a soundcard thing or maybe the agc on the 7300 messing with the levels, i never figured it out.

for what its worth psk31 on 14.070 still has activity if you sit there long enough, especially weekends. its not 2005 anymore but its not dead either. rtty contests are where i actually get my digital fix these days, cqww rtty especially, that one gets wild.