When I returned and was in the south east I could listen to Caroline's superb signal where I lived and worked. This was all over the place but mainly East Anglia, and East Midlands down to East London. It was quite popular in East Anglia but as you reached into East London not so much.
In February I picked up Beatles music and a few programmes by Blake Williams and Johnny Lewis and together on 729khz. I still have the recordings in the loft, but these can be found on the internet too.
They said they would be back. In early May I heard a terrific signal on 558 with more popular music than Caroline were playing. I started tuning the companies vans and vehicles. Feed back from my colleagues was good, but they said there's no DJ. After a little over two weeks I got picked up by my colleague (I didn't drive at the time) and my colleague Rick Hendy said your station started talking today and the DJs called Rick too.
The station was very popular in my company and I started hearing it in the bakers, chip shops, taxis too. I lived in the Cambridge area
I returned home to East London/Essex border for a few weeks in the summer and literally the station could be heard in shops, cars and in the park it was that popular.
When I did start driving we didn't have presets in some of the vehicles and when Caroline moved to 576 and had changed to a more popular format all you did was tune slightly once a song you didn't like to either 576 or 558. I listened to both but the stand out presenters I recall going to were David Lee Stone and Charlie Wolf and Johnny Lewis and Jay Jackson on Caroline. 84 and 85 was an offshore radio fans dream as you could also listen to Monique and it brought back memories of listening to Radio Mi Amigo for this non Dutch speaker.
For someone who only got into offshore radio in late 74 it was great to have this as I had only ever heard Caroline and Mi Amigo the stations of the 60s and early 70s were just history books to me sadly, so therefore I loved it. 
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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.
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Laser 558 - 40 years today - Darren 24/5/2024, 9:15:19
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