so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for contacts and watching the waterfall fill up but honestly after a while it feels kind of hollow, like youre not really talking to anyone just exchanging signal reports and grid squares and then its done. someone in my local club mentioned JS8Call and i fired it up last weekend and its a totally different vibe but i cant figure out if its actually useful or if its just FT8 with a chat window bolted on.

the issue im running into is that my decoded messages are kind of hit or miss even with good signal levels showing in WSJT-X on the same band at the same time. like i can see -10dB contacts on FT8 no problem but JS8Call seems to need a stronger signal to actually get a readable message through. is that just the nature of the mode or am i misconfigured somewhere. running a IC-7300 into a fan dipole, nothing exotic.

also curious if anyone still runs PSK31 regularly. i kind of want to try it just because it seems more like a real qso but every time i tune around i hear almost nothing on 14.070 anymore. is that basically dead or just a slow band day thing.

yeah JS8Call does need a better SNR than FT8, that's kind of baked into the design since youre sending actual text rather than a fixed message structure. FT8 gets away with those crazy weak signal decodes because it only has to match against a known set of possible transmissions. JS8Call is basically a keyboard-to-keyboard mode built on top of the JS8 waveform which is derived from FT8 but the message flexibility costs you maybe 5-6dB compared to raw FT8. so if youre seeing -10 on FT8 you probably want at least -4 or better for reliable JS8Call copy.

as for PSK31, its not completely dead but its definitely not what it was in like 2005-2010. you can still find activity especially on weekends and during contests that include it, and 14.070 still has some life, try 20m around 14.070-14.074 and give it a bit of time. it does feel more like an actual conversation once you get a QSO going though, totally understand the appeal. the waterfall on PSK is actually kind of beautiful when the band is open and youve got a dozen signals running simultaneously.

im in the same boat tbh, FT8 is great for chasing DX and filling the log but after a while it feels like clicking a video game rather than operating radio. i tried JS8Call a few months back and stuck with it, theres a small but pretty active community especially on 40m in the evenings at least in my area. the @ALLCALL stuff is actually pretty cool once you get used to how it works.

one thing that helped my decode rate in JS8Call was making sure my audio levels werent too hot, same as FT8 but it seemed even more sensitive to overdriving. also check that youre not transmitting too wide, the normal speed setting is fine but some people run turbo mode which is wider and you can step on each other.

RTTY is another one worth trying if you want something that feels more old school and there's actual contest activity so you can get on during a RTTY roundup and make a ton of contacts pretty easily even with modest antennas.