closure, Radio Caroline moved from 576 to 558 kHz, a clearer frequency. Technical background Laser played most of its music from tape cartridges as the American management wanted control over material broadcast. The former research lab at the stern of the ship was converted into two studios plus a newsroom, which contained a Kaypro 4 computer and telex link with the station's office in New York. This link was achieved initially by a COMSAT installation on the upper deck, which used Inmarsat; it could access regular telephones, although at $15 a minute. Later the ship used a private marine VHF channel to a base in Kent. The broadcast transmitters were a pair of CSI 25 kilowatt AM transmitters, built in Boca Raton, Florida. Usually only one was in use at half power, due to the limitations of tuning components in the antenna. This was an "inverted L" array running up to the top of a 100-foot-high fore mast, and then across to a similar construction at the stern of the ship. Coverage was good with the "commercially marketable" core area of the signal travelling 140 miles over land, which included most of England, all of the Netherlands and Belgium and much of northern France as far as Paris. The audio quality was a little better than most other AM broadcasters in western Europe, as the equipment had been set up to modulate with frequencies up to around 8 kHz, whereas many stations in the UK for example rolled off treble frequencies at 4.5 kHz. The programme feed was modified by an audio processor made by Circuit Research Labs of Arizona, while Radio Caroline (based on another ship nearby) used an Optimod processor. Other media in the UK ran stories about who the owners might be, and in August 1984 the Evening Standard named a BBC TV journalist, Roger Parry and an Irish businessman, Philip Smyth. Aftermath MV Communicator After Laser Hot Hits went off the air in 1987, MV Communicator was again impounded. This time it was stripped of studio equipment, although the transmitters and generators were intact. The ship was sold several times and impounded by the Portuguese Government in Lisbon. In 1994, when the ship was taken to the Netherlands. There she was refitted with a new 50-kilowatt transmitter and mast and broadcast programmes of Holland FM from a mooring on the IJsselmeer. The following year Communicator was