so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and honestly love it for just racking up contacts and seeing how far out i can hit with low power, been doing a lot of QRP stuff around 5w and its pretty mind blowing what you can work even on a compromised antenna situation like mine (attic dipole, HOA nightmare, you know the deal)

but here's the thing - it starts to feel a little hollow after a while. like youre not really talking to anyone, just exchanging signal reports and grid squares. which is fine and all but i got into this hobby partly to actually communicate with people so i started looking at JS8Call and it seems like it scratches that itch a little more since you can have like an actual back and forth

my question is does JS8Call hold up as well as FT8 in terms of weak signal performance? i know its a wider bandwidth and the cycle times are different so i assume the sensitivity takes a hit but i dont really have a good feel for how much. like am i going to lose half my contacts if i switch over or is it still pretty usable at 5-10w on 40m

also curious if anyone runs both regularly and how you kind of split your time between them, whether its worth keeping WSJT-X open on one VFO and JS8Call on another or if thats just asking for interference headaches on a single radio setup

yeah JS8Call is noticeably less sensitive than FT8, thats just the reality of it. FT8 is running at like -24 dB SNR capability and JS8Call is closer to -24 as well in normal speed mode actually but the throughput is lower so contacts take longer which means more chances for the band to shift on you mid-QSO. the fast mode helps a bit but then youre basically back to short exchanges anyway

i run both and honestly the way i think about it is FT8 for when i want to actually work a contact and see propagation, JS8Call for when the band is open and i have time to sit down and chat. 40m evenings are usually good for it. ive had some genuinely great rag chews through JS8Call, talked to a guy in Finland for like 40 minutes about his antenna farm, that kind of thing you just cant do on FT8

two radios would be ideal but i do sometimes run both on one rig with careful dial frequency spacing and just accept that ill miss stuff. its not elegant but it works well enough

PSK31 still exists if you want actual conversations and it handles weak signals pretty decently too, just saying. i know its not as trendy but theres still people on 14.070 most evenings and you can type back and forth in real time which feels way more natural than waiting for a JS8Call cycle to complete

not knocking JS8Call at all just thought id throw that out there since it seems like people forget PSK31 is still a thing lol