Yesterday, WPRB’s staff took a trip to visit our radio tower. Why? Um, because we’ve never been! You’ve probably passed our tower dozens of times and never realized it. We tell you about it every night when signing off. But really, what do any of us know about it?

What we do know: WPRB moved to this tower back in 1991, which boosted our broadcast range up to 14,000 watts. (That’s a lot!) Our tower shares space with several other stations, cell phone transmitters and whatnot. It rests peacefully in a state park, amidst spectacular green foliage. It’s so tall that some kind of bird (A condor?! A hawk?! An eagle!?) can be seen flying around the top. Last but not least: without the tireless work of WPRB’s Chief Engineer (Scott Fowler) and the tower, we’d be nothin’. The tower completes us.

After the jump are a collection of photos from our trip, so take a look!

The giant New Jersey Network satellite dish, compared to the size of the WPRB staff.

Spare satellite dish parts, just hanging around. Need one? (Kidding!)

Base of the tower.

Caution. Seriously! This place might be cool and all, but there’s tons of metal and high voltage electricity everywhere.

The door to our the WPRB “shack”. We use the phrase “shack” lightly because it’s the most high-tech shack we’ve ever encountered.

Conveniently set to “WPRB Rock.” Fun fact: the Optimod Audio Processor, a standard in broadcast technology, was designed by WPRB alumnus Bob Orban, who “wasn’t happy with the sound of albums being heard on the ‘new’ stereo FM stations.” Thanks Bob, for making such a great piece of equipment, and for keeping WPRB sounding great!

Scott gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the guts of WPRB’s transmitter.

The high tech way of making sure WPRB is still on the air.

In a space this small, there’s a place for everything.

An upside down sign.

Being held by a thread… sort of: the guide wires that keep WPRB’s tower up.

The WPRB staff, trying to reach the top of the tower, the only way we know how.