So ive been running FT8 for about a year now and honestly it scratches the itch for logging DX but it always felt kind of... hollow? like yeah i worked Reunion Island last week and that was cool but the whole exchange is just signal reports and grid squares and then its over, no actual contact at all really.

Somebody on a local net mentioned JS8Call and I finally got around to installing it last weekend. took me a while to get the timing sync figured out and i had the wrong audio levels going in so my decode rate was terrible at first but once i got that sorted out it actually feels more like real operating. had a 20 minute back and forth with a guy in Vermont and we talked about his antenna setup and everything. on 40 meters around local sunset.

My question is - is there a reason more people arent on JS8Call? every time i tune around i find maybe 2 or 3 people, whereas the FT8 frequencies are always packed. is it just the slower speed, or the fact that you actually have to pay attention to it? im running an IC-7300 into a trapped vertical, nothing fancy. curious what others think who have used both for a while.

yeah this is kind of the eternal debate in weak signal digital. FT8 won because its optimized for one thing - moving calls through the log as fast as possible with minimum SNR requirements. JS8Call is trying to be something different, more like a low-power chat protocol built on the same WSJT engine. the problem is it appeals to a smaller slice of operators who actually want a QSO instead of just a contact.

i ran JS8Call pretty heavily for about 6 months, mostly on 40 and 80. the heartbeat/relay stuff is genuinely interesting if you get into it, theres a whole infrastructure of store-and-forward messaging that works with very weak signals. but your observation is correct - the population density is way lower and youll sit calling for a while on a slow day. i think it never hit critical mass because FT8 already filled the casual digital slot and PSK31 people mostly stayed on PSK31 for ragchewing. JS8Call kind of fell between the chairs.

that said the 7300 is a great radio for it, just make sure your drive level to the PC is conservative or youll be generating harmonics all over the waterfall and nobody will tell you directly, theyll just not reply lol

i tried JS8Call once and could never get my clock sync right, gave up honestly. might try again reading this. does it use the same 15 second timing as FT8 or different