so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and its great for what it is, racking up contacts and all that, but i keep reading about JS8Call and im curious if anyone here actually uses it for like real back and forth conversation type stuff. the 15 second exchange thing on FT8 is fine but you cant really say anything meaningful, its basically just signal report and grid square and youre done.

i messed around with PSK31 for a while back when i first got my general and that felt more like actually talking to someone even if it was slow. wondering if JS8Call fills that gap or if its more of a niche thing that not many people actually run. my radio is an IC-7300 going into WSJT-X and i have no issues with the FT8 side of things, just wondering if js8 needs a completely different setup or if i can run both.

also curious about weak signal wise — is JS8Call actually comparable to FT8 or does FT8 still win there? i know FT8 is supposed to be like 10-12 dB better than CW which is nuts but i dont know where JS8 falls in that spectrum.

yeah i run both, have for a couple years. JS8Call is a totally different vibe from FT8 — you can actually type out a real message, ask someone how the weather is, whatever. its slower obviously and the weak signal performance isnt quite as deep as FT8 but its still pretty impressive for what it does. i think the threshold is somewhere around -18 or -20 dB SNR which is still way better than PSK31 ever was.

setup wise you dont need anything different really. same audio interface, same CAT control if you have it, just install JS8Call alongside WSJT-X and point it at the same audio device. just make sure youre not trying to transmit on both at the same time which sounds obvious but ive definitely done that accidentally when i forgot to close one of them. the 7300 works great for this stuff, the built in soundcard makes it pretty easy.

honestly the activity on JS8Call is lower than FT8 but theres a dedicated group that hangs out on there and some of them will ragchew for an hour. totally different feel. worth installing and just listening for a while to see if anyones around on your bands.

RTTY guy here mostly but i tried JS8Call last winter when propagation was garbage and wanted something that could punch through. its decent. the store and forward relay thing is kind of interesting too if you dig into it, not just point to point. i never really got deep into FT8 because the automated nature of it bugs me a little, feels like the computer is doing all the work, but js8 at least you're typing real words so it scratches that itch a bit more.