MV OLGA PATRICIA

First of all read this:

April1966, the Olga Patricia project, Much More Bla Bla, Home off the Boss Bla Bla Jocks.

In late 1964 there was this boardroombattle between Texan Radio London investor Don Pierson and British Philip Birch. The battle was all about control over Radio London and not the format of the station. Pierson wanted total control and wasn't about to turn this over to Birch. An almost fatal mistake for Big L. When you operate a foreign enterprise always have a local man or woman<it's 2002 you know, so we cannot exclude females> in charge of the company, they understand the local business. Foreigners simply don't! And the Texans were like the Men from Mars for UK radio standards in the mid sixties. Don't get me wrong, Texans are great folks ofcourse for a Sunday barbeque. In the end Birch won the battle and Big L became the number one station in the midsixties and Pierson simply enjoyed the revenues from his investment in Radio London.

But ofcourse Pierson promised to be back with his own station teaching us a radio lesson and in April 1966 the MV Don's Revenge sailed to the UK. Onboard two radio stations, Swinging Radio England and Britain Radio. SRE was going to be the flagship of both stations and programmed according to Piersons view on top 40 radio.

The result of all this was that infact Miami based top 40 station WFUN had come to the UK. In an interview on Anglia TV SRE PD Ron O"Quinn in April 1966 onboard the Olga Patricia mentioned the fact that real top 40 personality radio had come to the UK and London and Caroline were in for a shock. Ron was wrong, British listeners were in for a shock. SRE deejays were not talking to the listener but shouting at listeners, using loads of reverb and telling us how Boss they were. Mid sixties US top 40 radio is great to listen to if all the necessary ingrediants are there too. That means enough commercials, commercial script, weather and traffic and sports, listener games in the hand of capable deejays made their programmes into something special to listen to.

Dan Ingram, Bruce Morrow and the late Robert W Morgan made allthis into an art. But these ingrediants did not excist on the Olga P. So, Larry,Jerry,Ron,BoomBoom and Rick were thrown back to time and temperature deejays and never became the heroes they dreamed of.

Roger Day and Johnnie Walker understood what the British listeners wanted and developed their own but natural personality. In an interview Roger once said that reading the news on SRE was like flying Concorde. Indeed the Radio England news to us West European listeners  was like a ride on a  wild horse or cow,what ever you prefer! But these newscasts were nothing but a watered down version of the 1962 WFUN Fundemantal news. Even the jingles SRE used including the famous weather countdown came from WFUN jingle tapes. WFUN Fundemental news was an over produced newsshow that contained more soundeffects than newsitems and was read by what we now call standup comedians rather than newsreaders. Indeed A cacophony of sounds.So, what started on May 3 1966 on 355 mtrs mw and later 227 mtrs mw came to a halt on November 4 1966.

By reading all this you may think I didn't like SRE. Wrong you are! It was infact my number 1 station with the best jingles ever< Pams 27 Jet set>, lots of Tamla Motown, their oldiesweekend and ofcourse the best radiocomedy ever CHICKEN MAN. I still enjoy listening to tapes of Dean, O"Quinn, the late Brannigan,Randall and Smithwick. Their newspresentation sounded superb, my number one newsreader John Ross Barnard! Although not many commercials were heard on SRE my favoutite one is Oscars Disco in Essex. The backing music used was Billies Bag by Billy Preston and the guy reading the commercial shouted his head of, infact this commercial could be heard all over Essex just by playing it over the studio loudspeakers and the transmitters turned of.

I wasn't the only Dutchman who enjoyed SRE, during the Dutch TT in Assen June 66 many trannies were tuned to 227 mw. The Dutch liked it, British prefered Caroline and London. Roy C's Shotgun Wedding always reminds me of this legendary radiostation.

Now, let's take a look at Olga...................

Once again an artist impression of the Olga Patricia and tender. In the background even Radio London can be seen

         This is what they had in mind, Radio England as swinging number one and Britain Radio for quality mid 60s easy listening.

Olga now renamed into Laissez Faire

This is the original 355 Britain Radio car sticker

Where is the guy who painted the new name on the stern of the vessel.

And this ofcourse is the other end of the sticker for Radio England.

The deck of the ship and the high voltage aerial box.

Once again a very exclusive photo from the Hans Knot archives, by the way< in Dutch tussen haakjes> all photos on the SRE/BritainRadio pages come from his archive. This photo was used for stationpublicity in the newspapers and shows the original deejay line up in early May 1966.

From left to rechts Ron O"Quinn, Brian Tilney, Colin Nicol, Larry Dean, Rick Randell, Johnnie Walker and Roger Day. Behind the panel its Jerry Smithwick. Later studio photos from SRE show a somewhat different mixing panel. Who can explain this, let us know.

The tender offshore 1 alongside.

          Larry Dean taking care of business. Behind Dean the SRE music format on the wall.

Coverpage of the SRE swinging tour of the year 1966 brochure.

You see what I mean, the studio console is different from the newspaper photo above.

                                                Peir-Vick ltd organized this 1966 tour for SRE. Not very succesful, which is an understatement.

                                                 THANKS TO ONCE AGAIN  MARTIN KAYNE< ANDY CADIER> WE FIND OUT HOW

                                                 THINGS WORKED IN THE SRE/ BRITAINRADIO STUDIO.

The studio's and transmitter hall on the Laissez Faire were constructed in
two large prefabricated rooms that were simply lowered into the ships hold
and the hatch covers replaced.
There were two studio's which were more or less the same.  The 'Radio
England' one, which eventually became the Dutch Radio 227, had a
reverberator giving a slight echo on the microphone.  The mixing desks were
I believe made by Collins and American company and were very easy to operate
and quite uncomplicated in design.  These had rotary controls as opposed to
faders, with about 9 channels, there were 2 turntables, facilities for 2
microphones, two NAB cartridge machines, three Scully open reel tape
recorders and an NAB cartridge carousel.  This was part of a fully automatic
radio system where the tape machines would play back-announced music
changing automatically from one machine to another as each song ended. This
device would also insert jingles as required, but did make quite a noise as
the cartridge selector rotated, but the on air sound was very good.

Pre-fade listen in the headphones was achieved by simply turning the
selected channel volume to zero, where you felt an inaudible click and that
channels non broadcast output could be heard in the headset.  You could also
play music through the monitor speaker whilst broadcasting something else by
selecting Audition on a switch above the respective volume controls.  The
centre of the panel was dominated by a large volume unit meter.

The two 55kW transmitters were located in a separate unit which fed the
signals into a loading coil chamber located on the deck in front of the
ships bridge.  As this ship operated two stations I believe there were quite
elaborate filtering arrangements to prevent the output of one station
breaking through on the other, which tends to happen with transmitters
operated in close proximity in the same frequency band.

When I was on Radio 355 it was all middle of the road easy listening music,
similar to that previously broadcast by Britain Radio.  Radio 355 did differ
in the method of presentation, with the intention of filling the gap between
the pop stations and the fort based Radio 390 which tended to be a bit
formal and had individual programmes like the BBC.  Radio 355 was more
format radio with much the same music being played all day.  There were
breaks in the music usually for religious programmes like "The World
Tomorrow" which went out twice daily and a 10 minute "Thought For The Day"
and also "Revive Your Hearts"  broadcast during the daily breakfast shows.
All the religious programmes were recorded on tape and played back on one of
the three large Scully tape machines which had remote controls mounted above
the mixing desk.  In many recordings of this station you can't hear the
generators but you can hear the studio air conditioning behind the
presenters voice.

While 355 had many listeners in their homes it was also very popular as
background music in shops, offices and hotels, the station definitely had an
air of friendly respectability about it.  It was not unknown for solo
artists to go out to the vessel and perform live.

02/02
Andy Cadier, (Martin Kayne)

Johnnie Walker taking a closer look at BritainRadio automation called Carousel.

The original SRE/Britain Radio QSL card, in this case sent to......

Dick van Schenk Brill in Haarlem Holland

In rough seas the deck of the ship was a dangerous place to be

Dave mc Kay opening up the transmitter door, the station was of air ofcourse

The engine room onboard the ship

Two aerials onboard

Close up of the radio 355 studio

After the closure of SRE Radio Dolfijn played easy listening for Holland.

The format of Dolfijn was similar to Britain Radio but it also included Dutch Hoempa!

This is how Dolfijn advertised in the Dutch press.

Loud and clear from Groningen to Limburg? No way!

In March 1967 Dolfijn was replaced by Radio 227 with a top 40 format for Holland.

But once again they were not very succesfull, 227 closed on July 21, 1967.

After only 15 months of broadcasting Olga returned to Texas.

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