Fun fact: despite the videos claiming the sirens were broken, they actually weren't. The sirens (Federal Signal Modulators) were performing the Alternate Wail signal, a combination of the Wail and Hi-Lo signals. All Federal Signal electronic speaker sirens can perform this signal, as well as the mechanical Thunderbolt 1003 and 3T22 sirens also made by the same company. Chicago sadly switched to the standard Wail signal years back.
It's a common tradition for small towns to keep their old noon whistles going, decades after they stopped being used for their original purpose. There are tons of 1920s, 30s and 40s-era sirens that are still used every day as noon whistles, as well as some Cold War era stuff.
And that's how I ended up at level 30 before finally taking out Benny... main quest, main... schmuest.
Especially if you get too far and the game takes control of your character to start a cutscene before you can turn back around.
There's a whole community of siren enthusiasts like myself, there's thousands of us. Sirens are really neat machines that have a ton of interesting history and unique models. It's a niche hobby for sure, but I have no shame in sharing it.
Exactly. A basic electric mechanical siren just consists of a motor, a centrifugal fan called a chopper, and a stator to chop the air as the rotor spins. It can't get any simpler than that. There are tons of mechanical sirens from the 1920s and 30s that are still in service today because of how basic and easy to maintain they are!
Bit of a rant about my city's system: Our sirens are tested weekly on Mondays, since we live around a lot of chemical and petro plants that can release some nasty stuff if something goes wrong. Haven't had any serious warnings since I moved here years ago, but the sirens themselves can't exactly be relied on either.
Problem is, our system consists of "High Power Speaker Station" (HPSS-32) sirens made by a company called ATI Systems. Holy fuck these sirens are garbage. Speakers manufactured in China that leak rainwater inside and short out the drivers, controllers that completely lack redundancy if one or both of the amplifiers fail, which renders it only half as loud or entirely silent. ATI refuses to support older hardware and forces the city to buy new controllers when the old ones die within a decade, causing the maintenance costs to outweigh having just gone with a less scummy manufacturer.
ATI itself is a horrible company that basically suckers cities into buying their junk by undercutting legitimate manufacturers, then leaves cities hanging when their sirens start rapidly failing. San Francisco recently had to remove their entire system of HPSS16 and HPSS32 units because the system kept failing and had a ton of security vulnerabilities. The system didn't even last two decades, yet the Cold War era STL-10 mechanical sirens they replaced had served the city without issue for half a century.
So yeah, I don't exactly feel safe with our current system. If your city has ATI sirens, don't count on them in an emergency and get a weather radio instead.
They'll likely run a different signal than the normal test. If, for example, they normally test in "alert" (steady) then they might use the "attack" (wavering up and down) signal instead.
Don't feed the troll. They don't actually care if it's gambling or not.
That pizza delivery game was a favourite of mine as a kid. I don't think adultswim still has the games, but there's other sites that have them.
Because oppessing people is okay as long as you're the one doing it for totally good reasons! Absolute power TOTALLY won't corrupt you! Even funnier how a ton of Hexbear tankies showed up to that thread to downvote bomb everyone, just like they're known for doing. Haven't changed one bit in the past year or so!
One of my favourite albums of all time. I don't think there's a single bad song on the album, I highly recommend it if you like artistic punk rock with horns.
A 1952 advert from Federal Enterprises advertising their Thunderbolt 1000 and Model 2 outdoor warning sirens. The Model 2 is still in production today, while the Thunderbolt was made until 1990. Both can still be found in service across the North America, though many Thunderbolts are starting to be replaced with newer sirens.
Federal Enterprises now runs as Federal Signal Corporation, and many of the listed cities still use old and new Federal sirens.
This ad was released roughly around 1948, advertising the Mobil Directo air raid siren. I've posted an ad for this siren previously, which only featured the Mobil Directo's gas engine-driven BN52 model. This ad introduced a new variant of the Mobil-Directo, driven by a 10HP electric motor instead of the 25HP Wisconsin aircooled engine. This new electric model proved extremely successful, as engines require significantly more maintenance and are far less practical for siren use than a motor.
The new model, known as the Mobil Directo BN44E, saw widespread use across the United States and Canada. Rated at 126 dB @ 100ft for 10/12-port dual tone models to nearly 128 dB for 8-port single tone models, the BN44E was louder than most other sirens during the time of its production. The engine-driven BN52 would see sales dry up quickly after the BN44E's release, being discontinued in 1953. The BN44E would be sold until 1967, when BNCO was forced to stop making sirens due to stiff competition from Federal Sign & Signal.
BNCO would create a new division, known as Alerting Communicators of America (ACA) who would redesign the Mobil Directo into the Allertor 125, which saw the steel projector replaced with a fiberglass projector, and the dual belt-driven pulleys on the rotation drive replaced by a single chain-drive rotation mechanism under the siren. The Allertor 125 would be sold until 1981, when it was replaced by the Penetrator-10 which replaced the large projector with a simplified horn.
The Model M was an early electric siren first developed in 1920 by the Inter-State Machine Products Company, who would later rebrand to the Sterling Siren Fire Alarm Company based out of Rochester, NY. The Model M was perhaps the most popular and widespread fire siren sold in North America, with units being sold across the US and Canada in great numbers. It is said that nearly every volunteer fire department in the eastern US had a Sterling Model M, or Sterling's other sirens such as the Model 5VX or Little Giant.
Unlike earlier electric sirens such as the Denver sirens I talked about in a previous post, the Model M was designed from the ground up to be weatherproof. Reliability in an emergency is everything, and its designer, Merton C. Armstrong, knew this. The choppers are covered with rounded "sounders" which also direct sound downwards, the motor is protected by a cover, and the air intakes on each side had protective wire mesh to keep debris out. By 1928, the siren would be improved with metal louvres on the intakes to further protect it. The Model M used motors between 3-10 horsepower, could be single or dual headed, and were rated to roughly 115 decibels @ 100 ft.
The Model M as previously mentioned saw incredible success. As shown by a friend of mine who made a map of every known Sterling siren, these sirens found their way everywhere. Unfortunately, by the early 1970s, competition became too great as Sterling's 50 year old design became obsolete. Sterling went out of business in 1972, but its designs were bought by a new company known as Sentry Siren who produced the Model M until 1986.
Sentry Siren is still in business today, and many of its sirens are directly based on the Model M's chopper design which is a testament to how good the Model M was. Many Model Ms remain in service today, including several units which are roughly 100 years old. Van Alstyne, TX's Model M is speculated to be the oldest surviving Model M, and is currently still in service.
Video of an early single tone Model M in Van Alstyne, TX, presumably the oldest known Model M
Video of a later dual tone Model M with louvred intakes in Columbus Grove, OH
Monthly or even weekly tests are definitely preferable. You don't want to wait until a serious emergency to find out the motor locked up or the controller doesn't work.