Walter said "🚫 558 aerial input only 12kw and quite often decreased to 6kw 💯 963 from the Ross Revenge at that time was 35kw ☢️ signed strength on land showed 558 to be a fair bit stronger 😥 Walter "
This is a very interesting discussion. Yes I always found Laser to be stronger than 963 and much better than 576. If you travelled away from ground wave ie up North, you would lose 963 before 558, but at night 963 would really belt in strong.

But Laser Hot Hits on 576 test transmissions in Dec 1986 there was a point on the first night where they wound the power right up and it was even more really strong, blasting right over all that foriegn stuff that used to plague Caroline when it was on 576 at night. That seemed to be even stronger than Laser on 558 to me at that point, shame the masts fell down not long after.

On the topic of payola songs making most of the money in the later days of Laser, a lot of them were not bad and I think a lot of hits that were had in the 80s have Laser to thank for the chart success. I can think of many of them, a lot were soul acts in 1985

As for the balloon aerial, you would have to be a MORON to think that they didn't need to be tethered to the ship!