A Visit to WSM

In late February and early March, 2002, your intrepid editors took a well-earned escape from the dreary northeastern winter to visit three of the southeast's most important cities: Atlanta, Birmingham, and Nashville. The highlight of our trip was a visit to the Brentwood, Tenn., transmitter site of WSM, where chief engineer Watt Hairston graciously gave several hours of his time to show us around the site and the fantastic collection of historic documents filed there. The photos shown here document only a fraction of what we saw and learned about WSM.

One thing we had already known when we decided to come on this trip was that WSM is not only home to one of the three surviving original Blaw-Knox diamond-shaped towers, but it is in fact the tallest such tower ever built. (Incredibly, at WSM we saw plans for a proposed 1,200-foot tower of this design -- but it was never built.) The other remaining Blaw-Knox diamonds are located at WLW in Cincinnati (which was built by the samw crew as built WSM's), at WBNS in Columbus, and at WFEA in Manchester. WBT in Charlotte had three of them, but they were severely damaged in a hurricane some years ago, and the towers currently on the site -- although built to the same design -- are not the original construction.

We went directly to WSM on our arrival at Nashville airport. After we left Brentwood, we headed directly down the road to Chattanooga to spend the night and see what towers that small southern city had to offer. We would return to Nashville a few days later.

WSM Transmitter Building
WSM Transmitter Building
1957 Radio Service Map
1957 Radio Service Map
Floor inlay in WSM lobby
Floor inlay in WSM lobby
Old equipment on display at WSM
Old equipment on display at WSM
More old equipment
More old equipment on display at WSM
WSM transmitter
WSM transmitter
WSM transmitter (on air)
WSM transmitter (on air)
Inside WSM's 3DX-50
Inside WSM's 3DX-50
Back of WSM transmitter building
Back of WSM transmitter building
The ``giant capacitor''
The ``giant capacitor''
Base of main WSM tower
Base of main WSM tower
WSM tower
WSM tower
WSM doghouse
WSM doghouse
Base insulator of WSM
Base insulator of WSM
Air-core capacitor in WSM
      doghouse
Air-core capacitor in WSM doghouse
Air-core inductor in WSM doghouse
Air-core inductor in WSM doghouse
WSM at dusk
WSM at dusk
WSM at midday
WSM at midday
WSM aux tower
WSM aux tower

Copyright 2002 Garrett A. Wollman. All rights reserved.