Industry veteran Dave Burns never tires of visiting the tower site of WLW(AM). On a recent visit he took this spectacular picture of the station’s Blaw-Knox tower from an unusual angle.
Dave, like many others in our business, finds industrial history fascinating. He long kept a copy of a 1961 Broadcast Engineering spread on the WLW facility. One day in the late 1970s, while he was working at Allied Broadcast, engineer Jim Hampton invited him to the station for a tour.
So recently, when friend and “hamateur” Dave Wilson wanted to visit, Dave Burns put in a request, and made the pilgrimage in January. He emails RW: “To see firsthand the electronic-electro-mechanics of 1934 and ensuing developments, which still are there, is a ‘children’s museum/amusement park experience’ for me. Now, a few keystrokes on a 50 kW the size of a refrigerator with a small glandular condition is really cool. But this wonderful workmanship in plumbing is always a marvel, no matter how many times I’ve been there before.”
For more info about WLW including more conventional views of the tower, see Jim Hawkins’ page about the station. And audiohistory.com has a nice photo of the nearby historical marker.
