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WASY Gorham

D

Dusty Dale Brooks

While reading an obituary for my old colleague Andy "Big Ange" Jackson I saw that he had worked at WASY. As did his old WPRO stablemate Joe Thomas.

That must have been an interesting station.

Does anybody have any history to share?
 
I have no history to share, other than vague recollections.  WASY was a very short lived station at 1590 on the dial.  I don't think it was on for even a full year. This was in the early 1980s.  I recall hearing the larger than life Big Ange on WASY, and being surprised that he was on such a small station.

I was working at WGAN in Northport Plaza (Portland) at the time.  'GAN was a showplace, a beautiful facility.  One day, for some reason, Big Ange was in the building and I met him.  I recall him saying "jeez - this place is fantastic!  Ya got any openings?"

Big Ange struck me as a radio curiosity.  One of those air personalites who seemed to be on the threshold of greatness because of his enormous on-air presence.  Yet, if I recall correctly, with the exception of WPRO , his career was pretty much limited to medium markets like Elmira and Binghamton. I could be wrong, though.

Regarding WASY, I too am curious to know more about 1590 as an allocation in Gorham.  Seems like a couple of different stations briefly occupied this dial position.  If I'm not mistaken, Ron Frizell (WLAM and Kiss 100) was somehow involved in it, too.

Anyone?

Nick Seneca
 
According to Fybush's Maine radio history 1590 started as WDCI then as WASY and then under Frizell took the WJBQ calls before being abandoned in the late 80's only to be reborn as a simulcast of CNN headline News before dieing off for good (similar to WGUY AM in Bangor which was running Headline News when Stephen King bough the station and pulled it dark in 1995)
 
As I recall 1590-WASY was a live local Oldies station that started up in 1982 replacing religious WDCI. As I recall the story...the owner of religious/classical 97.9-WDCS had spent so much money to put 1590 on the air, that he ended up having to sell 97.9 to the owners of 106.3-WJBQ, and he ended up moving WDCS to the much inferior 106.3 as a result, in 1980. In any case, he than sold WDCI in 1982 which became WASY. 1590 ran an extremely directional 5000 watts which had horrible local coverage. Interestingly though...I never had any difficulty picking up WASY in upstate New York at night...although I couldn't hear it at my residence near North Windam, Me at night. As I also recall, WASY went dark at some point in 1985, being resurrected in 1986 as satellite fed Oldies WJBQ. Other posters have noted the rest of that story...
 
I worked part time / weekends at WASY in 1982/83 - fun strange operation. It started out with a lot of great folks that were good mentors to me - Bob Rose, Big Ange, Johnny Rock. All in all a great fun place to work, and being only part time and not dependent on the income it was care-free. It was the sort of place that would hand you the paycheck on Friday, and ask you not to cash it until tuesday..... Yep, one lung radio at it's finest. By the time I left to work for WJBQ/WMER, they switched to "Dancin' with the Y" - a disco-ish dance music format that was probably 180 degrees out of sync with the rest of the world.

There was a period of a few weeks when the switching at the transmitter site failed, so at sunset we could change the antenna pattern from omni to directional, but we could not lower the power from 5kw to 1kw as required. As a result we got a lot of requests from sailors crossing the atlantic, and even a few reception reports from Norway / Sweeden and other European countries. Totally illegal, but no one was around to fix it and the order was to keep the tubes warm and whatever ad dollars we could coming in.

I had not heard that Ange had passed away. If you have a link to the obit I'd appreciate seeing it.
 
In the fall of 1992 I was working there but WASY was just a repeater station for a AM Talk station.....We had a make shift studio at 10 exchange st in Portland for local stuff but I spent 99.9 % of my time in the transmitter shack or the 3 bay garage as I like to call it. I sat in a recliner and watched TV and every 3 hours I would pull meter reading and listen to the sizzle of field mice and snakes die as they tried to snuggle up to a coil.....or piss of the local hunters by lighting off fireworks in the field to scare the deer near the towers.....I never knew this to I worked there but for anyone who had a summer home on the east side of Sebago Lake at night could see all 3 beacon warning lights on the tower.....In early 1993 I showed up to work only to see a US Marshal's car there and told that the station and its assets were seized..... Shortly after 3 towers became 1 tower. Growing up I went to Lyseth Elementary school in North Deering neighborhood of Portland, I think It was in the late 70's early 80's....I had a music teacher there named John Fenlerson who used to tell us kids to listen to him on WASY on the weekends!
 
Well, here goes...In 1981 I was the program director of what was WDCI (owned by Fred Miller WDCS). I turned the format from a traditional gospel to a Contemporary Christian radio station. We were on the air for a brief period but because of the frequency and modulator probs I am not sure we could even be heard in Portland at night. I actually went to visit Joe Thomas and Big Ange when the studios moved from the Gorham Historical Society building to above Amatos in Gorham. They changed the audio processing change and mod tubes and had a really nice sounding crisp AM signal. They called it "Waxy" because of the oldies format and I rather enjoyed the laid back personality of Big Ange. He was very entertaining.

It is sad to hear that Big Ange passed. With that strong New York accent he was a very nice guy!

Doug James
 
From what I recall it was in one of those places with no three phase power, the new 870 had the first and may be the only specially built single phase Harris DX-10's
 
WASY was 5kw. The transmitter was a pair of McMartin 2500 watt units with a diplexer. There were 4 towers. Everything about that place was bad.
 
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