I was 16 and was really into Caroline at the time, the signal on 963khz was the loudest thing on the dial, but I was only 15 miles from the ship as the crow flies.

I heard the tests on 729 khz from laser and got quite exited about a new English pirate station to listen to, I hated Radio 1, before Caroline returned I would listen to Capital.

Then one day in early may I heard loud music on 558khz, I knew it was from the communicator but to the best of my knowledge there were no announcements until the transmissions started on the 24th.

I personally hated the American accents and stayed listening to Caroline, but Laser was on everywhere in my area, what else was there to listen to apart from Orwell, Essex Radio or Radio 1 all were much weaker and suffered terrible interference at night here in Colchester.

Our local chip shop switched from Luxemburg to Laser and if you took a taxi anywhere it would either have Caroline or Laser on.

It seemed longer but 6 weeks after Laser 558 launched Caroline started testing on 594khz and later 576. Signal was strong like Laser but mod was slightly quieter and suffered from interference from German stations after dark. But it was good to switch between the 2 stations when a song came on you didnt like.

I dont know what the audience was like before its demise, I noticed lots more radios tuned to Caroline in 1985 as they had introduced a new daytime format, plus Laser had a lot of downtime which must have been an advantage to Caroline.

Caroline 558 was great in my opinion, I dont think Laser hot hits had half the oomph that the original laser had, but it was off air more than it was on, so difficult to say how things would have panned out.

Best DJ on 558 was Charlie Wolf, I loved it when he was on breakfast on Atlantic 252.