Sunday 30th December 2001:
So how have you enjoyed seeing Interceptor back on our tv screens agains
then? Don't just keep it to yourself, visit the discussion forum which is now
really thriving since Interceptor's revival. Click "communications" to
find the link or simply visit forum.interceptors-lair.com
I've just corrected a few page links on the side navigation
bar of various episode guide pages.
Sunday 23rd December 2001:
Well I've finally done it! Phew! The episode guide is once again complete.
I've just finished the last installment - Cornwall. This guide features over
fifty new images from the programme.
The discussion forum was reinstated earlier this week. If
you've not visited yet, please take a look and signup!
I doubt I will be adding any more content until after
Christmas so I would just like to wish you all a merry Christmas and a peaceful
new year!
Sunday 16th December 2001:
I've just noticed that the discussion forum has been deleted. I don't yet
know if this is an error at the host or if the board has been hacked. I am
currently waiting to be contacted by the host with a view to getting the board
restored.
Sunday 2nd December 2001:
It really is excellent to see all of the activity in the discussion forum
following the news that Interceptor is to be repeated on Challenge TV from next
week. If you don't already know, Challenge are currently running at least two
different trailers which show up in most ad breaks at the moment. If you haven't
seen Interceptor since 1989 and you can't wait until next Saturday then the
trailers are well worth a look - I still can't believe the picture quality. I
can't wait to renew my copies of the episodes in digital format!
To celebrate the news, I've finished the Cotswolds episode
guide - just Cornwall to do now.
Saturday 1st December 2001:
Okay - make a note of this date in your diary - Saturday 8th December 2001.
Why? Because this is the date that Interceptor finally returns to our screens!
After several years of pressure from several fans (myself included), Challenge
TV
have finally decided to show Interceptor. Now how cool is that????? Don't miss
it!!
Sunday 25th November 2001:
New web links page created in Communications.
Monday 12th November 2001:
I've finally completed the Borders episode guide. It contains somewhere in
the region of 37 new images from the episode. Only two more episode to go -
hopefully this section will be complete by Christmas allowing me to start
populating some of the other areas of the site.
Thursday 1st November 2001:
Quite a bit of news! :o) First of all, I've updated the Episode Guide home
page. It is basically the same design, however I've used a better photograph of
the actual Cornwall map used in the series - thanks to Clive Harris. In
addition, I've changed the font of the episode titles to be more in keeping with
fonts used in the site, improved the compass backdrop and best of all, all of
the episode descriptions are now text rather than graphics. The end result is a
nicer looking and much faster page.
That's the site updates out of the way, now for the real news.
First of all, Jonathan Souch has left a comment on the
discussion forum. Jonathan is now a director of Castle Air and was one of the
helicopter engineers responsible for directing the contestants to their start
positions.
A couple of weeks ago I finally met Clive Harris and his wife
Jenny. Clive was a contestant on the Cornwall episode of Interceptor. Clive very
kindly took me for a flight over London in a Robinson R44 helicopter. It was my
first ever helicopter trip and was absolutely fantastic! :o) We followed the
London heli-lanes from Denham right along the Thames as far as the London
Docklands. After the flight, we all went for a coffee and spent an enjoyable
hour or two talking about Interceptor, Treasure Hunt and Castle Air. You
couldn't hope to meet a nicer couple and my girlfriend and I had a brilliant
time. Thanks Clive and Jenny.
My girlfriend wrote to Michael Malric-Smith in September to
see if he would meet me and show me around Castle Air. He called Lorna as soon
as he received the letter and agreed!! In the first week of October I was on
holiday in Cornwall and we went along to Castle Air. I was pretty nervous! We
walked into the reception and someone approached the hatch - it was Keith
Thompson!!! He was Anneka Rice's pilot in "Treasure Hunt". He asked us
to take a seat and a few moments later Mikie opened the door. He is a really
nice guy and took us through to the hangar where there were several Agusta 109's
in various states of repair. Notable helicopters there were G-TELY which looks
almost identical to G-MEAN, the Navy and white 109 used in the BBC's
"Flying Gardener" and G-SPEY which was the comms helicopter in
"Treasure Hunt". I once again saw G-ONTV which I saw earlier in the
year. I had assumed it was the old "Treasure Hunt" Jetranger that they
had re-registered. It turns out that it was the Jetranger that Mikie ditched in
the sea a few years ago. Apparently its at the bottom of the sea near
Alderney(sp?). He says if you can find it, you're welcome to it! :o) Mikie spent
a while talking about each of the helicopters there. He pointed out the
£250,000 camera that was being removed from the "Flying Gardener"
helicopter - they had been filming a new series the day before. He gave me a
tour of the cockpit of a new Agusta 109 Power they had there and then he took me
through to the end room. Well guess what was there - G-MEAN!!!! Unfortunately
she has seen better days. Castle Air had sold her and her new owners proceeded
to land her a little too heavily. She rolled on to her side and that was that.
She is now being used for spares and was already heavily stripped down when I
saw her. She had been re-registered as G-USTA and her new owners had removed the
yellow stripe and replaced it with a silver one. I have lots of pictures which I
will on-line soon.
All in all, October was quite a month! :o)
Thursday 20th September 2001:
Another page is now available in `Behind the Scenes` - Jerry
Grayson.
Wednesday 19th September 2001:
I've created two new pages in `Behind the Scenes` - one for
Annabel Croft and one for Michael Malric-Smith. More coming very soon.
Sunday 16th September 2001:
I'm back!! I have finally finished the Interceptor image CD I have
been working on for the last five or six months. There are over 450
images indexed although many are duplicated into high quality and
viewable versions. Anyway, I hope to start putting more images up for
you shortly!
I'm going to resume development by starting work on
the final episode guides. Look for them appearing soon.
I've got an exciting day ahead of me on October
20th. I will be having my first ever flight in a helicopter - piloted
by none other than Clive Harris, the male contestant in the Cornwall
episode of Interceptor. I can't wait!
Saturday 14 July 2001:
New rollover effect added to all site hyperlinks (Internet
Explorer users only). Missing hyperlinks added to the MP3 icons on the
audio download page.
Sunday 8 July 2001:
I've just completed the configuration of a brand new forum for
this site. It is SO much better than the old one. Much nicer to view
and use and infinitely more configurable and controllable than the
FrontPage Forum that was running before. You may post as a guest or
you can register for free and gain access to extra features. Hope you
like it!
Thursday 5 July 2001:
Fixed a few strange links in the news section - it was impossible
to view the 97 news - thanks Lorna! :)
Sunday 1 July 2001:
Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I'm in the middle of
creating an Interceptor image CD - partly for myself so that I have an
easy to browse library of every image I have for future web site use
and partly for Clive who was kind enough to lend me his entire
collection of Interceptor goodies recently.
In May, I had to visit Plymouth for a meeting. While
I was there, I nipped in to Cornwall to pay a visit to Castle Air.
I've been there several times before only to find the hangars all
closed up and nothing happening. This time, I drove into the car park
to find three helicopters on the apron, and most of the hangar doors
wide open. There was an Agusta 109 outside, recently used by Mikie in
the Flying Gardener series on BBC2. Next to it was a new Agusta 109
Power. To the side of the hangar was a repainted and re-registered
Bell Jetranger - the ex-Treasure Hunt helicopter is now known as G-ONTV
and is mostly white with a diagonal yellow and black stripe. Inside
the hangar, I saw the Treasure Hunt comms Jetranger - G-SPEY and what
appeared to be several A109's in various states of repair. I managed
to get quite a few pictures which I will post at some point.
Finally for now, I've just returned from Cornwall
again - this time I was on holiday with my girlfriend! I have visited most of the
Cornwall episode locations before, but managed to visit a few new ones
this time - the shire horse centre (where the Interceptor attempted to
ambush Sarah), St Enedoc church (Sarah's start position), and Daymer
Bay which was visited by both Clive and Sarah at various points in the
episode.
I'm hoping to complete the image CD very soon, at
which point I will continue to add more content to this site. Keep
watching!
Wednesday 11 April 2001:
I have just published the Derbyshire episode guide as promised. It
contains approximately thirty new pictures.
Sunday 8 April 2001:
I've almost completed the Derbyshire episode guide - I just need
to create the first page. I am going away for a couple of days, but
expect it on-line by Wednesday or Thursday.
On Friday I will be going to the Lake District and
will be staying overnight in the King George IV Inn near Eskdale Green.
This was the Interceptor's lair! I can hardly wait!
Sunday 25 March 2001:
Finally - I've just added the model of G-MEAN for use in MS Flight
Simulator 98/2000 created by Andrew Tunley.
Sunday 18 March 2001:
I've added the new scroll effect to the Search page.
Wednesday 14 March 2001:
I've just added a trick to the news pages - allowing the news
features to scroll within my design rather than having to scroll
within the browser window. It looks a lot better but unfortunately
only works in Internet Explorer. Netscape users will see the old style
news pages.
Tuesday 13 March 2001:
I've added a great new picture of Annabel to page three of the
Introduction. G-MEAN model for FS98/2000 to follow in the next few
days.
Saturday 10 March 2001:
Added a new item to the downloads page and corrected a couple of
minor formatting bugs.
Thursday 8 March 2001:
Phew - finally finished one of those jobs that seems simple but
takes ages - namely converting all of the buttons at the top and the
bottom of the page to site font - verdana - they were formerly Arial
and somehow didn't look right anymore! Although I have been careful in
my testing, I may have introduced some broken links - please hit
refresh if you encounter any problems and if the problem persists
please let me know.
Interceptor news. Quite a bit really. I've been
provided with a huge amount of new content, from magazine clippings (TVTimes,
TV Guide etc), some excellent new pictures and slides, programme
production notes and a copy of the proper pilot episode. All I knew
before I started watching it was that it was a French pilot for
Interceptor. It is actually the pilot episode featuring Jon Iles
previously seen in ITV's The Bill as DC Dashwood. I'm pretty sure it
is a Chatsworth pilot although you wouldn't know it apart from what
appears to be Malcolm Heyworth guiding one of the contestants from the
helicopter. Everything is different to final show though - the
Interceptor is in a leather jumpsuit with a black helmet and a hand
held zapper resembling a gun. The host was not Annabel but I'm sure
I've seen her somewhere before. The contestants seemed fake somehow
and I'm convinced they were an actor and actress. The pilot was not
Mikie and he piloted a white helicopter. The Interceptor conducted
most of his dialogue with the main camerman who he called `Marcuzzi` -
surely Henry Marcuzzi who was a cameraman in the UK Interceptor
episodes. The Interceptor's only other form of transport was a three
wheeled trike which looked most difficult to control!
Anyway the above will appear on the site at some
point in the future - hopefully soon!
I've also received the answers to several questions
I put to the Cornish contestant, Clive Harris which I will publish in
the next couple of weeks.
I will shortly be adding another download - a model
of G-MEAN (Agusta 109) for use in Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 or
2000. Kindly created by Andrew Tunley.
Sunday 28 January 2001:
As you may know if you've looked at the discussion forum or the
guestbook lately, one of the contestants from Interceptor has been in
contact. Clive Harris, the contestant on the Cornwall episode has very
kindly written a comprehensive account of the whole Interceptor
experience it. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and I have published it
on the 'Behind the scenes' page. Please be aware though that several
behind the scenes secrets are revealed which may affect the way you
perceive the show in the future!
Monday 22 January 2001:
Some minor navigational bugs corrected.
Behind the scene page updated with the new style as
used on the communications and downloads pages.
Sunday 21 January 2001:
I've just uploaded another twelve pages and twenty-four new images
- the guide for episode four - Cumbria.
Thursday 18 January 2001:
I've finally finished the next installment in the episode guide
section - episode three: Wye Valley. There are twelve new pages with
twenty-five images, most of which are new.
Have you seen Mikie on BBC2 the last couple of
weeks? He is the pilot in a programme called Flying Gardener. Have a
look this week. Its worth watching just for the aerial photography and
to see what is probably the replacement for G-MEAN - a new Agusta 109.
I'm not sure about the new colour scheme though - I preferred black
and yellow! :)
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