so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for getting contacts and all that but honestly after a while it feels kind of hollow? like you exchange grid squares and signal reports and thats it, done, next contact. i started poking around JS8Call a few months back because someone on a local net mentioned it and its a totally different vibe - you can actually have a slow conversation with someone, relay messages, check into nets, all that stuff.

the problem im running into is my timing seems to be off sometimes and i get these partial decodes on JS8Call that just dont resolve. running WSJT-X for FT8 on the same machine with no issues so its not like my clock sync is broken. tried messing with the JS8Call settings but honestly the documentation is kind of scattered and im not sure what im even looking for. anyone else had decode issues with JS8Call specifically and figured out what was causing it?

also kind of curious what other people think about FT8 vs something like PSK31 or even RTTY for making contacts that feel more like actual ham radio. i ran PSK31 back in the day and liked it but nobody seems to be on it anymore which is a shame

the partial decode thing in JS8Call is almost always a timing issue even if your clock looks fine. the thing is WSJT-X is more forgiving with timing drift than JS8Call is, at least in my experience. what i'd do is grab Meinberg NTP and let it really lock your system clock down tight, not just rely on windows time sync which is honestly kind of garbage for this stuff. also check what JS8Call speed setting you're using - normal speed is the most forgiving, fast and turbo modes are way more sensitive to timing problems so if you're experimenting with those that could be it.

and yeah the PSK31 nostalgia is real. i still fire it up occasionally and you can find people on 14.070 if you're patient but it's nothing like it was 15 years ago. the weak signal stuff has kind of eaten everything. which is fine for propagation but you're right that FT8 contacts feel more like logging a callsign than talking to a person. JS8Call at least tries to fix that even if the user base is smaller.

RTTY is still pretty active during contests if thats your thing, CQWW RTTY gets a ton of activity every year and its genuinely fun to run. but yeah for random weekday operating its pretty quiet these days.

i bounced between FT8 and JS8Call for a while and ended up keeping both open on different VFOs basically. FT8 for when i just want to work somebody new or test propagation, JS8Call for when im actually around and want to chat. the heartbeat feature in JS8Call is kind of neat too once you set it up, lets people know youre around without you having to babysit the radio. decode issues i havent had much trouble with but im on a linux box and i think the NTP situation is just better by default there than on windows