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Mills On The Air - Saturday 9th May 2026
This year, my Mills On The Air Special Event Station will be at Chailey Windmill.
At the moment, this is an 'unofficial' event as far as MSARS is concerned, but the committee is soon to discuss adopting it as a recognised club event. I do now have full event insurance regardless, so please feel free to come along and trip over whatever you like.
I'll be operating SES callsign GB6DGK in honour of our SK friend Gavin Keegan. It may not be registered on QRZ.com, as I'll be taking the callsign 'on tour' for the rest of the year to several locations, and it could get confusing.
Chailey Windmill was last activated in 2023 (see https://midsussexars.org.uk/news/350-drg-are-at-chailey-heritage-windmill-on-saturday) when I had the pleasure of spending the day with members of the Downland Radio Group, including Gavin, who made me feel very welcome. I shall be doing the same this year, so all are cordially invited to join me either to operate or just spend some quality time out. If any members of the DRG are reading this, please come along for the nostalgia and a cup of tea. It would be lovely to see you. Likewise anyone from the Worthing club that knew Gavin.
The Windmill
If you have never been to Chailey Windmill, it's a beautiful Grade II listed smock mill originally built in 1830. It's no longer functional, after having its internal workings removed, so there is plenty of room inside to operate comfortably (bring your own camping chair). Oh, and by the way, it's set in a stunning location on Chailey Red House Common (https://chaileycommons.org.uk/), so also a POTA site (GB-3219). I have full access to the windmill (with mains power, hopefully).
When
I'll probably be there from 10:00am 'till 4:00pm on Saturday, but I'm not committing to an exact schedule. It's just for fun, as always. Main operating band/mode will be 40m SSB, but also 30m FT8 and FT4, 17m SSB and FT8, maybe 20m, 15m and 10m. Conditions and time will ultimately dictate. I may even return on the Sunday morning for an encore.
Come and join me, or work me from home if you can't afford the petrol come May.
Huge thanks to Stefan and the crew at Nunsfield House ARG for making this event possible.
Location
Maidenhead Locator: IO90xx
WAB Square: TQ32
CQGMA Windmill Number: X91880
Lat: 50.975092, Long: -0.025218
What3Words: ///heads.glows.gentle
Google Maps: Mill Ln, North Chailey, Lewes BN8 4EG
Additional Info
More information on the windmill can be found here: https://chaileyparishcouncil.gov.uk/amenities/chailey-windmill-museum-of-local-artefacts
Full information on the current mills registration list can be found at the Nunsfield House ARG website here: https://www.nharg.org.uk/content/active-mota-stations-2026
Berni M0XYF
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Hi all.
A very quick update from this years Annual General Meeting last night (Friday 27th March 2026).
Firstly, apologies if anyone thought I was a bit too vocal. I just felt that there were a few things that needed either highlighting or moving along, but I realise that could come across as annoying.
For those not in attendance, a couple of points of note. Alan, Merv and Stella were all re-appointed unopposed in their respective committee positions (Hon. Secretary, General Committee and Hon. Program Secretary). We thank you all for your continued service.
Much discussion was had about finances, and it didn't really seem to be going anywhere, so I proposed a vote on raising the annual membership fee by £5 to £40 from 1st Jan 2027, and this was agreed by the vast majority of those present.
The committee took away several points for discussion, including the possible recognition and ratification of the various outdoor radio events that I have planned for this year as official MSARS events. That would formalise these and additionally allow them to be covered under the club's RSGB third party insurance.
Next, a couple of takeaways that I had from the meeting. Firstly, regarding filling in the Jotform membership form. I offered to complete the form on behalf of any member struggling to perform this themselves. You can request my help by simply confirming in writing that your information has not changed since the previous year (or by providing updated information) via the much simpler webmaster contact form here: https://form.jotform.com/252163376930357
However, if you ARE able to complete the membership form yourself, THEN PLEASE DO!
The membership form currently requires that you enter both the first and second line of your home address. It was noted that some addresses, particularly those in Wales, only have one 'street' line. I've checked this, and I cannot alter the individual validation of these lines, as they are paired in the widget logic in Jotform, and cannot be validated independently. Sorry Wales! Just enter a space or a dot or something in the second street line.
I'll look into the CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) issue too.
Finally, I said that I would remind everybody that all members are invited to book a slot with Phil G4UDU to put the famous G5RV callsign on the air again this year. You can see what other bookings have been made at the bottom of our calendar page here: https://midsussexars.org.uk/calendar
Tony M0WND has it booked for both days this weekend, so hunt him down amongst all the contest stations, and give him a call
Thanks and regards,
Berni M0XYF
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The month got off to a good start, with a change of band and mode. I had decided to try FT4 and 24 MHz for a change. This seemed to be a good move with some serious DX appearing. My impression is that this band is populated by some serious and sensible operators. This month was also the one with all Brazil activity, celebrating the 92nd anniversary of the national club. By the 9th I had worked 14 of their 29 stations, and by the end of the month all but 5.
Bob Mcloud, VP8LP, popped up as did JS6RRR from Okinawa, ZD7DF, ZB2MD, and Steve GJ6WRI from Jersey.
For some strange reason Africa has been really active this month with ZS6, TJ1, CN8, TT1, V51, TZ1, TL8, TY5, D2, 5Z4, 7X2KF, TU5MZ, TJ1GD, J51A, all in my log.
There has been lots of activity from South America and the West Indies and even better, some Oceania. My best DX this month included FK8HA from French Polynesia and DU2W from the Philippines. To finish off the month I managed KL5EX in Fairbanks Alaska, HP1RY in Panama, and HC5RF in Equador.
Our old friend RI0SP is still floating about near the North Pole, this time in grid HR97.
Thanks to Berni's encouragement I am trying to get a new mode to work. FT2. This is twice as quick as FT4 and 8 times faster than FT8. The developers are issuing new variants faster than I can download them! More of this next month!
And as if there isn't enough going on, I have attached a diploma celebrating the 46th anniversary of the Andalucia hams.
Cheers & Good DX,
Chris, G4ZCS
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Quick note from Dick:
The station formerly known as G1CWP and/or G0LFF is now G1AFU. This is in homage to my late kid brother, Pete, who held the call originally.
73 Dick G1AFU
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An Early Review
You've heard of FT8. You may be of the opinion that you wish you hadn't, but that ship has sailed, my friends.
FT8 is the daddy of modern digital modes in terms of take-up. If you're into your digital modes, you may have dabbled with FT4. Think of it as FT8 after a double espresso - it's twice as fast and you'll have to concentrate to keep up with the flow unless you're in 'do-it-for-me' mode, which in itself does take some of the fun out of it. If you run in 'manual-intervention' mode, you can play two or three QSOs at the same time and rack up the contacts - but you'll need your wits about you. No time for a slurp of coffee, or you'll fat-finger your console.
Then on Monday 16th Feb 2026, Martino Merola IU8LMC dropped his experimental (but working) prototype of Decodium 3.0. It's a fork of WSJT-X, meaning it’s a perfectly legitimate copy of an existing piece of open-source software which then diverges from that original development, introducing its own code and configuration changes.
Forks typically go one of two ways: either they flourish into glorious standalone tools, or they end up as digital moss on a forgotten GitHub branch. Martino's effort is currently somewhere in between, but while it isn't the final polished article, it's already making waves on the bands, excuse the pun.
FT2 In Decodium
Now I like my digital stuff, but I looked at this and thought it was an interesting but ultimately pointless toy. Why? Because FT4 is already blisteringly fast - in fact it's on the limit of my operating capabilities when in full chat. Add to that the fact that FT4 is already packaged into the current stable and well-supported version(s) of WSJT-X (version 2.7.0 and version 3.0.0 Release Candidate 1) - so it's a mature and usable mode. I even scoffed a little when I found out that FT2 'only' decodes down to about -12 dB, compared to FT8’s impressive -20 dB - but it's a new digital mode and other people were starting to pick up on it and were already making QSOs.
Alright, let’s dive in and see what it’s like...
So here's what it takes. Installation isn't pretty, but it's not too tricky either if you follow the instructions laid out by the developer. I did, but still encountered a few teething problems. I'll briefly share them with you, along with some quick fixes, or at least my initial thoughts and observations at the end.
First, a little background. I currently use WSJT-X v2.7.0, not v3.0.0 RC1. Here's why that matters (or not). The installation page linked below leads you down the route of installing v2.7.0 as a starting point. Yes - having WSJT-X installed is a prerequisite, but when you read some of the technical documentation, it says the new software is based on v3.0.0 RC1. OK, so Decodium is really a Beta, but I've tried it with both, and it didn't seem to make much difference. On reflection, I'd recommend going with v2.7.0 for now.
Disclaimer: Based on my very limited experience of WSJT-X v3, there are 'features' of Decodium 3.0 which I've never seen before. These may be in WSJT-X v3 or they may be brand new. I don't know, but they're not documented with Decodium v3.0 that I can find, and this is a problem. Secondly, this thing is moving so fast that I've had to re-write this article three times in the last 24 hours - so I won't be quoting too many specifics.
How To Install Decodium With FT2
To get started, head over to HamPass: https://hampass.com/ft2 (or directly to https://www.ft2.it/) and download two files. The first one contains the forked code and associated support files (the installer for which was sadly only available for Windows when I started writing this, but is now also available for Linux, and rightly so, plus something called macOS?) and the second file is one containing the new frequencies being used for FT2. Mercifully, this downloadable file also contains all the 'existing' frequencies, so unless you've customised your frequency file (for the UK 60m allocation for example) you're good to go. If you have customised it, you'll have a bit of retrofitting to do.
At this point, I'm hearing all the non-digi guys bemoaning the loss of yet more spectrum to the screeching of electronic chalk on blackboard. Yeah. On virtually every band, but within the band plan (probably...). Relax - I can't see it becoming a big thing, and if it does, it'll take the load off FT8. I'll stick my neck out right now, and predict it will remain niche.
After building a Windows machine (doh!), I installed WSJT-X v3.0.0 RC1, but after then having a few minor issues using Decodium, I reverted to v2.7.0. This may or may not have been significant, as I still see glitches.
Next, decompress/unzip/extract the main program file (referred to as a 'plugin' - but it's not - so don't try and put it in the WSJT-X 'Plugins' sub-directory) into the same directory as you installed WSJT-X. The default is C:\WSJT\wsjtx on Windows if I remember correctly. You'll end up with a folder in there called something horrible like Decodium_3_202602014 or similar. Within that sub-directory you'll find the new executable wsjtx.exe. Create a shortcut to that and drag/drop it onto your desktop and rename it Decodium, to save your future self some confusion.
Now you can run it up, and use the program itself to overwrite the frequencies file (Import QRG file in WSJT-X (File -> Settings -> Frequencies -> RIGHT click on list -> Load -> select your downloaded ft2-bands.qrg file). The last option is called 'Load', not 'Import' - some of the instructions online appear to be incorrect.
Now I suggest a reboot.
The new tool appears to have an NTP function built in. I tried installing a third party time-sync tool (Dimension 4), but I think it just fought Decodium. I suggest you use a decent external NTP service and turn off NTP in Decodium. This worked best for me - see below.
I'll let you play with it and make up your own mind, but here's what I found. It's insanely fast, as advertised. It's so fast that your time synchronisation has to be really accurate, and that QSOs often break down causing messages to be re-transmitted because they were not received correctly. This wasn't just an issue with my QSOs, I observed it time and time again with other stations, which rather defeats the point. Is it better to send once with a high success rate, or twice for total redundancy?
FT2 3.8 Second Windows
Apparently, FT2 uses the same Forward Error Correction as FT8 and FT4 (77-bit payload, LDPC(174,91), 8-GFSK modulation) but I'm not sure that bundling that payload into such a short time window is workable. Maybe it can be perfected, but I found that even the lag caused by keying my radio, running through the amplifier, tuner etc. could jinx a transmission. Interestingly, the bandwidth is three times that of FT8 at around 150Hz, but even so...
Let me know if you try it, and how it works out for you. I also found that when using the built-in NTP function, the audio to the radio was somehow inhibited by the software if it thought that the Delta Time was too great, or the NTP time signal was out by more than maybe 500ms - it 'grades' these factors using a traffic light colour indicator in the status bar at the bottom of the window. A 'tune' would always produce output power, but a data transmission would seemingly only occur if those parameters were within tolerance, even though the radio was always keyed. The official maximum time sync differential is a tiny 50ms by the way, but I had it working when far greater than that, even with Decodium's NTP turned on. Delta status was reported with a fair degree of believability, and looks to be aggregated from the last few decodes.
An interesting project, and thanks go to the developer (and support team, testers etc.) for bringing it to the community. Don't forget that it's still an early Beta version, and I for one hope that they can iron out the anomalies (particularly the timing issues) and maybe bring some new options to the party. I would personally like to see a custom filter added, much like you can list only decoded 'CQ' calls. I would like to filter/highlight any specific text string - callsigns, 'POTA', regions, grids, wildcard country names, etc.
What additions or changes would you welcome?
I currently use scripts to monitor and flag/alert specific things written to the wsjtx.log file (not the .adi file) but it would be nice to see this included in the application in some way - once the basics are fixed, of course.
Berni M0XYF
