Have you seen it? Don't miss out on The Skyline Story. Will surely become a collectors item in the months & years to come.     Skyline Radio men Robbie May, Mark Ellis and Steve Fox. Skyline Productions have informed me that the initial run of 6 DVD's have all now either been sold or given away (May 2005).

In a recent 'online' discussion with Steve Fox, joint owner and founder of Skyline Radio, I asked Steve about the operational side of the FM transmitter set up.

HC. > I seem to recall the finer details were always shrouded in an 'air' of mystery by you at the time. Also you had quite an intricate link system in place, did Gott's & Co investigate this?.  

BD. > The only area of mystique was in peoples minds Horace - there were a lot of rumblings about a Customs & Excise law prohibiting possession of transmitters between 88 and 108 Mhz, as far as I know this was pure bullshit but SV and I decided that the supposed C&E law would be one of our "Trojan Horses" and we played out the saga to keep others from following us down the 24/7 route, reasoning that the DTI would give us an easier ride if the band was not full of 7 day a week full time illicit stations. I had Brian Anthony of JFM offer me 5 grand if I would tell him how to get around the "Customs Law" and Chris Stewart aka Barnbrook sent a couple of his henchmen round to inform me that if I did not spill the beans then my personal safety could not be guaranteed. The next 48 hours taught the Horizon boys not to f**k around with "The Lone Ranger", and an apology settled the issue. We also instructed the Skyline on air staff to use the words "testing and developing" in their reference to the FM service at the top of the hour station ident. Whilst I at the time held a T&D licence, this was I'm afraid another Trojan Horse. Truthfully the only thing anyone had to do was set up a transmitter and when Eric and Co showed up, tell them to clear off. The 49 WT Act does not insist that you must communicate with it's enforcers, nor as were all soon aware did it give them the right to seize transmitters or other gear, that being a matter for a Magistrate. We had interrogated the DTI two way radio system and the intelligence gleaned from that usually gave us prior warning if the "boys" were in our area. I also set up a small surveillance operation on the building that they worked from so usually was one step ahead of the game. Other stations also benefited from this resource. The Camberwell studio link was on 100mw UHF to a repeater link strapped by me and Al Hudson to the TV aerial mast at a tower block just around the corner from the studio which was UHF in and 203Mhz out (2w). Initially this fed the Knights Hill medium wave transmitter, but later was linked to Church Road SE19 for the FM service. The MW then took off air VHF. Considering that SV and myself started Skyline with the idea that it was our last chance to do about 6 weeks continuous broadcasting, we did not have a bad run. However I can tell you that when we had to close it, I was relieved. I got my life back because up till then the station owned my time 24/7.

BD. October 2000. ( One of Bob Dunn's 'on air' names was Steve Fox )

Read the story (newspaper cutting at the time)