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With the solar cycle on the upswing, there have been some great band openings, especially when using FT8! From here in S. NH (FN42) I have started making QSOs with islands in the Indian Ocean and with mainland Asia using 100W and a multi-band wire antenna. (My current one is a parallel dipole — it’s coils make it an antenna with 80m that fits into my back yard and it does the most common 5 contest bands — but note that a good end-fed antenna will save you from tuning hassles.) I have recently seen numerous stations in Japan, some in the PRC (China), and even S. Korea all showing up in JTAlert at once.
The array of flashing boxes for many Asian stations at once were difficult for me to read but a quick search of the web showed me how to disable that. I also made the dark region showing night on the map less dark so I could see through it easily. And remember that View->Alert Types Summary Window in JTAlert and View->Color Highlighting Scheme in WSJT-X will remind you of what the different colors mean.
If using FT8 seems somewhat impersonal to you, note that JTAlert lets you easily open the QRZ.com web page for a station, and I have been doing that more often to see the location of the DX station on a map and I usually get to see some pictures. I have occasionally gotten into ragchewing with contacts over the Internet using the instant messaging feature in JTAlert. With WSJT-X and DXKeeper (part of the DXLab suite) and JTAlert, making QSOs and uploading them to LOTW for confirmation is easy. (LOTW is one of the great reasons to join the ARRL, if you haven’t already.) All of that software is free.
Another benefit of using the digital modes, as Fred AB1OC once pointed out, is that those stations are more likely to upload QSLs. You can also see in JTAlert if they participate in LOTW (a diamond on the left side of the callsign box) or eQSL (a circle on the left). (The star on the left indicates that they are online for instant messaging.)
Also, https://pskreporter.info/pskmap.html is an important resource to help you see where your signal is reaching and where there probably are some hams on the air to contact (vs. where hams are sleeping or at work).
I find that working on the 5-Band Worked All States award and the DXCC awards for particular bands and modes is a good way to get more familiar with how different bands are behaving at different times of the day and night. It makes me more aware of which band I am using at any particular time. (It’s also hard to resist the draw of filling in those empty boxes in the grids.)
May your brown boxes quickly turn blue, your blue boxes soon turn yellow, and your yellow boxes all turn green or gray in JTAlert! 73!
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