so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for racking up contacts and working DX i never thought id get with my 100w and a wire dipole in the attic, but honestly after a while it starts to feel kinda hollow? like youre just exchanging signal reports and grid squares and thats it. no actual conversation happening.

somebody on a local net mentioned JS8Call and i downloaded it and messed around with it a bit but im having trouble understanding where it fits in. like is it meant to replace FT8 or is it more like a weak-signal chat mode? the interface is a bit confusing compared to WSJT-X which i guess im just used to by now. also not sure if there's enough activity on it to make it worth the learning curve, i tuned around 14.078 for a while and only saw a couple stations.

i used to run PSK31 back in the day and loved it because you could actually type to someone and have a real qso. wondering if JS8Call is trying to be that but for weaker signals or what. anyone actually use it regularly and can tell me if the activity is there

yeah JS8Call is basically what you're describing - it's built on the same weak signal foundation as FT8 but designed so you can actually have a free-form text conversation. KN4CRD designed it specifically because he felt the same way you do about FT8 being kind of robotic. the sensitivity is pretty close to FT8 which is the whole point, you get that weak signal capability but without the rigid message structure locking you into callsign/grid/73.

activity is honestly hit or miss depending on band and time of day. 14.078 is the common calling freq but a lot of people drift around nearby. i've had decent luck on 40m in the evenings, sometimes there's a little cluster of people just chatting away and it feels way more like the old PSK31 days. if you used to like PSK31 i think you'll get it pretty quick, the flow of a JS8 qso feels similar just slower per character but way more copy in marginal conditions. worth sticking with it for a few weeks before writing it off, the userbase is small but pretty active when band conditions cooperate.

i tried it for a couple months and kind of gave up tbh. not because its bad, i think the concept is solid, but i just couldnt find enough people on when i was free to operate. might be a time zone thing too. FT4 scratched a different itch for me when i want something faster than FT8 for contest-adjacent stuff but JS8Call never really clicked with my schedule. maybe ill give it another shot on 40 like the other guy said