While trying to track down the source of an unusual amount of radio interference, Tony King and his fellow club mates made a disturbing discovery.

Over the past few months our local club in St Albans, Herts, has been experiencing a lot of radio interference and many models have met there demise. Our Committee has been investigating the various possible sources of interference. Is it the high level of telecommunication masts in the vicinity? Or has it anything to do with high sunspot activity etc? We could not be sure. However one of our members is also a angler, he visited the local lakes to enjoy a spot of fishing when he noticed some of the anglers were using radio controlled bait-dropping boats. This prompted him to check this out, to his absolute horror he discovered that at least two of the boats were operating on 35mhz radio equipment, he decided to have a friendly chat to the anglers concerned, pointing out that use of this equipment on 35mhz was strictly illegal, the unfortunate response was verbal abuse.

The matter has been reported to the BMFA in the hope that they would deal with this matter and offer advice, It has been suggested that this is an isolated case but we are not so sure, I would welcome any feedback on this matter.

In the meantime it has come to my attention that there is currently a website which is openly advertising bait boats fitted with 35mhz radios.

The company is: Nottingham Bait Boats.

Website address: www.cygnet.co.uk/ukfw/nbb/

If any person has or is experiencing similar problems, or if anybody is aware of any company or advertiser in the Angling Press that is selling these boats equipped with 35mhz radio equipment then please inform myself or the BMFA.

Tony King

We, at Flying Sites, have tried to contact this company, only to have our emails bounced back. The email address is no longer valid. We have also trawled the Internet and found that although there are several companies currently marketing similar 'Bait Boats' all do quote that the radio equipment installed is either on the 40Mhz wave band or 27Mhz wave band.

We suspect that the webpage for Nottingham Bait Boats is an old one lingering on a website that has now been incorporated into a large Anglers web site, and possible that the company is no longer trading. Of course if you know differently, please let us know.

This does not however mean that one should be complacent. As Tony and his colleagues have found out, a number of these boat are currently in use by angler, some of whom care not one jot that they are breaking the law. We have also contacted the BMFA with all the above details and await their response. If you come across similar problems we suggest, as Tony has done, that you also contact the BMFA with all the information you have.