Bike Ride & Mid-Century Arc-eology

Today was a beautiful day to get on the CX bike.  What's more, with the lower traffic due to the current situation, I'm taking the opportunity to ride into areas of town that are usually off-limits to bikers with good sense.  Some of these are places I haven't been in for twenty years or more, if ever.  Back to today's ride, it was up into the north side of BSL, including Cedar Point, the area around Hollywood Casino, the north side waterfront, and... the WMEJ radio tower.

Formerly a local and blues 5KW AM station, since being flooded in Katrina, WMEJ has passed through a series of re-structurings and finally settled into a Gospel niche.  OK, not my thing, but it's still interesting to get a close-up visit.  You can read the little there is on the station at its wikipedia page.  And here, have some pictures:

  

   

Clockwise from top left: The Tower.  Tuner cabinet and tower base.  Tower base close-up.  Transmitter shack.

Things were in rough shape around the site.  No signage beyond a "No Trespassing" on the fence around the tower base (don't worry, I didn't).  But here's the crazy, noteworthy thing: you could hear the broadcast from inside the tuner cabinet.  Something's corroded, loose, or maybe something's grown into it for this to happen.  Here's a demonstration of how random junk can demodulate an RF AM signal into audio:

Heh!  Except that the audio from WMEJ was from decay, not innocent (if dangerous) tomfoolery.  Let's take a closer look at that tuner cabinet:

Yeah, a bunch stuff growing around it, maybe into it.  That's not good.  BTW, that ratty-looking wire sticking out from the insulator in the side is the main tower feed.

Anyway, it was a really fine day for a bike ride, into parts I usually don't venture, with an unusual stop along the way.  And yeah, while there's an unmistakeable air of decay around this tower, the rest of the ride was sunny and uplifting.  This stop was, however, really interesting.  Something different.  Gravel bikes take you to places like this, there's no stopping them.  Adventure-seeking is annealed into their frames when they're made.

ps: We all deserve a better picture of the tower.  Even in this current shape, towers are still awesome.

As always, click to embiggen.  And no, that's just lens flare and a cloud, not some whacky ionization effect.  Believe me, I would've heard it were that the case.