How it all began, WNKR the Radio Outlaws the story

Between 1979 and 1985, various people who had been using “CB RADIO” got together and started to talk about doing other radio related projects. The two major players in this group were Dave and Tim, later to be better known as, Dave Martin and “Sam the Dog”. Various attempts at building band 2 FM transmitters followed, not all successful. After a few years of building transmitters for other stations, it was decided to start our own station. Then in the summer of 1987 Dave Martin built a 100 watt band 2 transmitter on 91.8 MHz! We were ready to go on air. After searching our local area of south east London for suitable sites, we decided on a local tower block called Norvic house. Access to the roof wasn’t a problem, (friendly fireman supplied the FB1 key), and so after a quick check of the roof W.N.K.R. was ready to go on air! From then on, every bank holiday weekend, we’d go on air, live, for at least 48 hours! This continued until august bank holiday 1990, when we decided to give short wave a go, we borrowed some transmitters from W.F.R.L. and came on air on five frequencies, 91.8, 92.6, 6275, 15730 and 25720.The response we got was unexpected, Loads of phone calls were taken, with most of them from people listening on short wave!!!!!! A decision was made to start regular broadcasts on short wave as soon as possible!  A 20 watt valve transmitter with inverter was built and 2 hours of taped programs were aired usually on 6316Khz.Then on New Year’s Eve 1990 we did a live broadcast into New Year’s Day 1991, just as the new broadcasting act came in to force. Many stations went off the air! But W.N.K.R. was just starting to get serious!