My Sirens

My Klaxon Signals Super-M

I won this siren in a siren contest sponsored by Jason Chrismon's warningsirens.org.

I submitted a recording of an American Signal T-128 siren run in the alert mode for three minutes, the typical activation for the City of Denton Texas tornado siren system.

The competiton was fierce and I did not expect that this recording would win... after all who has not heard a T-128 in Alert mode? Much to my amazement Jason proclaimed me the winner by several votes, and I provided him shipping info, and the wait began.

About a month goes by and still no siren
Finally I get an email from Jason explaining that the siren had gotten mixed into Christmas decorations and gotten whisked away to his attic. It had been recovered and he had just sent the siren on its way by USPS. So, the wait began again.

Out of the blue, I got a knock on the door one day and the postman dropped off this box.
At the time, I had no clue what it was, and then examined it further and recognized the sender's address.
Hmm, I think I know what might be in here actually

Never being one that was able to resist a closed box for long, I produced my Leatherman and attacked the tape.
It doesn't look very descript yet, but that is about to change.

After unwrapping the bubble wrap (Jason packs things extremely well)
I soon produced a recognizable shape... a Klaxon Signals Super-M siren.

Let's go up and look at this from a different angle

Now we are looking down at the top of the Super M. (the background is carpet)
This is (quite obviously) a single-tone siren.
It runs on 220 volts at 50 hz and produces 128 decibels at 3 feet.
I joke that it is the little brother to the local T-128s.

I have yet to make a proper timer circuit or even put a plug on the siren yet.
Living in an apartment, I like to keep peace with the neighbors even though they don't always keep peace with me
I suspect that putting 110 across the blue and yellow wires might compete quite well with booming rap music
though I haven't had to test whether or not that is true yet.

Me with my new toy!
Finally a die-hard siren fan can once and for all say that
he has a siren!
(yes this is really me)

My Federal Signal Model L siren

There's been a lot of folks that I owe thanks to for this siren
First of all, without Sirenkid, this siren wouldn't have even come into my possession in the first place.
This siren was rescued from a Catholic Camp where it served as local warning, but the camp was too large to do the job
Sirenkid restored and donated a Sterling M siren to the camp, where it is doing its job admirably.

He warned me that the siren was rather weathered but still functioned quite well.

I had never personally seen the siren before

.

Well, he wasn't joking about it being rather weathered

It sat in my parent's garage for some time, until I had a chance to disassemble it one day.

Sitting in a humid garage wasn't the best place for this guy, but I had nowhere else to store it.

As you can see, it was originally a nice bright red color all the way around,
with an aluminum rotor somewhat oxidized but mechanically still sound

Here's a good look at the actual siren rotor and motor itself.

A lot of time passed.
Like always happens, I got busy with other things (mainly trying to find a good job)
Occasionally I would get asked, "dude, are you gonna let that siren rust away or are you gonna fix it?"

One day, my dad was restoring his new wood lathe he had bought, and it required a lot of metal cleanup.
So, I went over and grabbed the siren parts and started wire-brushing and soon I had a nice clean
bare-metal set of parts.

Another week or two passed, and the conditions were soon right to prime the metal parts
In this process, I learned that I was such a horrible painter that I ended up having to sand down
almost all the primer and have some assistance re-doing the parts properly.

I took a new position at a data center in Dallas, and the now primer-white L was again put back on the shelf someday patiently awaiting a new bright-red coat of paint.

One day I decided "damn it, I'm going to get my L done today....it probably thinks I don't love it anymore!"

Well, I must have been thinking really loud that week about "the forgotten L"

I arrived at my parent's home, and lo and behold, I had been beaten to the punch.
This was no longer just my pet project, my brother had decided to step in, and BOY did he step in.

IT WAS GORGEOUS!

Other than the faded nameplate, it looked as though it had just come down the assembly line at Federal Signal that morning.

I owe a big hearty "Thank YOU!" to my brother Bryan.
You did a better job on the paint than I could have ever hoped to!

Now, enough blather, here's a good set of "after" pictures.

The glare is the flash.

We had to cut the fasteners apart with a hacksaw in order to get the base off the siren
As you can seem it has all been replaced with brand-new stainless steel hardware


The only thing left of the nameplate is the stamped on voltage rating (120/240)
The weather has destroyed the rest of it.

I decided to leave the junction box attached, as the wiring is rather short
and it somewhat helps balance the siren's weight out.

I think you'll agree, it is a far shadow of its former self.

The paint is absolutely flawless.

Well, that's all for now, folks.