Technical Profile: WAYH

FM Technical Profile: WAYH

Station Name:: WAY-FM
Frequency:: 88.1
Format:: Contemporary Christian
Transmitter Location:: South of the town of Harvest, east of Wall-Triana Highway and north of Nick Davis Road. Just west of Huntington Ridge Road, off Weslin Cove Road, atop the hill.
Power (ERP):: 3.5 kW
Antenna:: Directional
Antenna HAAT:: 670 ft.
Other Information:: 60 dBu protected contour map, from the FCC.
:PS-[?] Time-[?] Text-WAY-FM Uplifting. Upbeat. Read. song by artist PTY-[?] PS-WAYH-FM
More Information:: [FCC]; [FCCdata]; [Radio-Locator]; [Wikipedia]
[Facebook] For the WAY FM network
[Image] Image of the RDS text display on an Insignia HD portable showing the Radio Text and PS (call sign) fields.
[Image] Image of the RDS text display on an Insignia HD portable showing WAYH's RDS as fed through translator W258AE in the Florence area.
[Studio] Street View imagery for the WAY-FM studio on the Huntsville-Decatur Highway in Madison, for the local WAY-FM station and repeaters.
// W243EP Madison
// W225AB Florence
// W258AE Florence
Owner:: Hope Media Group
History:: This station came on the air in March 2003 as a replacement for a couple of Huntsville area WAY-FM translators. The station's launch almost didn't happen because of a GPS snafu with the STL (studio-to-transmitter link). When planning to send the signal to the transmit site from the studio, there was a hill in the way that was not accounted for, due to the early inaccuracies of the system. They had to rent a lift truck and elevate the dish twice as high (80 feet!) as the tower that was on site to reach the transmitter site northwest of Huntsville. The lift truck saved the day, though, and the launch went off as planned. The station has been the main WAY-FM outlet in the Tennessee Valley ever since. It now serves as the originating station to multiple translators all across north-central Alabama. In 2015 the station got into the holiday-music game by going all-Christmas on 20 November.

In February 2022, WayMedia agreed to merge with Hope Media Group, based in Houston, Texas. In April 2022, one of the translators for the Shoals-area, W254AA licensed to Colbert Heights, was dropped from the list of rebroadcasts, presumably because WAY-FM was being heard on another area signal, one that Hope Media actually owns outright.