The Communicator

I have visited and stayed onboard the radio ship MV Communicator, formerly Gardline Seeker, a few times. The ship was home to Laser 558, Holland FM and Veronica Hit Radio whilst anchored in and around the North Sea before she eventually ended up in the Orkney Islands where she was used to broadcast a local station on 105.4 MHz in 2004.

To start off we have some photos of the ship whilst it was anchored off the French Coast in 1989. There were no transmissions at this stage, and rumours abounded as to what would happen next. I took these photos whilst returning to the Ross Revenge. Supplies were dropped off at the Communicator for the small crew onboard at that time.

The following photographs were taken by me in the summer of 1995 when the MV Communicator was being used to transmit the programmes of Veronica Hit Radio from an anchorage at Trintelhaven in the IJsselmeer in the Netherlands.

MV Communicator
MV Communicator
MV Communicator
The AM transmitter
Some redundant transmitters
The small offshore radio museum onboard
The newsroom
Got to love the old cart machines
Arie Swets doing a bit of cleaning. The Trintelhaven Yacht Club is in the background
Mike Davies with a beer…
The ladies join us onboard
Walter Simons
Arty farty photo of the satellite dish used for uplink/downlink purposes
The food processor (if music be the food of life)
The beast!
The N307 highway runs across the dijk separating the IJsselmeer & The Markermeer
Your onboard café!
Ding Ding!