Brendan Ahern
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Re: Madison County & Redstone Arsenal, AL Siren History

Sat Jan 09, 2016 6:51 am

30 years is about the useful life on a warning system. Sure, you may get longer, but 30 years is acceptable. Sounds like those Altecs were up a lot longer than they should have been. They were really the original electronic sirens. I will say, electronic sirens have come a long way. I still prefer mechanical, but there is nothing wrong with most electronic systems today. ATI is just an inferior product. The quality is low to begin with. So comparing Whelen to ATI isn't really fair.

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alineber
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Re: Madison County & Redstone Arsenal, AL Siren History

Sat Jan 09, 2016 8:43 pm

Brendan Ahern wrote:30 years is about the useful life on a warning system. Sure, you may get longer, but 30 years is acceptable. Sounds like those Altecs were up a lot longer than they should have been. They were really the original electronic sirens. I will say, electronic sirens have come a long way. I still prefer mechanical, but there is nothing wrong with most electronic systems today. ATI is just an inferior product. The quality is low to begin with. So comparing Whelen to ATI isn't really fair.

I agree Brendan, that Whelen is better quality that ATI and there is nothing wrong with most Electronic Systems today. But you can't live for today. You have to plan for the future. What might work fine today and parts are readily available is not a guarantee 20 plus years down the road. The Altec system started having issues within 10 years of service. Two of the site locations were so bad that they had to replace them with Federal Model 2T's in the late 1970's. The entire Altec Systems were susceptible to constant lightning strikes. Huntsville did purchase two Federal Electronic Speaker Modulator 1004s back in the early to mid 1990's, when they bought most of the Federal 2001's. Both of these Modulator 1004's were also hit by lightning within 5 years and completely fried. It could be that our area is more prone to lightning strikes and just can't handle the Outdoor Electronic Speaker Systems.

I completely understand, that 30 years is a good life span for Warning Systems. A 30 year old Mechanical Siren, that only has a typical motor and chopper inside a housing, is far easier to fix and find replacement parts than a 30 year old electronic speaker and its voice driver that is no longer being manufactured. All of us have seen 50 plus year old Mechanical Sirens that are still being used today, but no one has ever shown an Electronic one that's even 30 years old still being used today. Even cars today are harder to work on with all the electronics on them than the cars that were made 40 years ago that were more mechanical. With many cities and towns across the U.S. on tight budgets already, as an EMA officer it's you duty to think ahead into the future and spend what little money you get for Warning Systems wisely. 30 years down the road the city leaders might say no to replacing your Warning System. You better have a Warning System that you can sustain another 20 years if needed, until new leadership can be elected into office. Just look at many places still using the old worn out Thunderbolts. Most of these Thunderbolts should have been replaced 20 years ago. They keep them going, because there is no money budgeted for a complete replacement. Luckily, these old Thunderbolts are Mechanical units that can be broken down and rebuilt, within reason. If these were Electronic units, it would be almost impossible and very expensive to find parts to keep them going. If you could not keep them going, the city leaders would most likely abandon the Outdoor Warning System and tell everybody to just rely on the Alert Weather Radios only. We have seen this happen too many times in the news. We all know that Alert Weather Radios and the Outdoor Warning Systems both play an important roll in warning people of danger. There has been several times in the past when the Alert Weather Radios failed to sound a Tornado Warning, because lightning hit the transmitter tower and took it off the air. There has also been times when some of the Outdoor Warning Systems failed to sound too. Nothing is fool proof. To tell people to just rely on the Alert Weather Radios only, is no different than telling them to just rely on the Outdoor Sirens. Never put all your eggs in one basket. The more warning devices you have the greater public warning ability you have. I personally think Outdoor Sirens, Alert Weather Radios, Reverse 911, and Email Alerts should all work together. If one of these should fail when called upon, you still have the other three getting the warning out to the public.

I hope you understand that I have nothing against Electronic Systems as long as you live in an area where your city or town leaders don't mind spending the money to keep them up and have no problem replacing them every 20 years. Unfortunately, most city and town leaders aren't like that.

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freebrickproductions
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Re: Madison County & Redstone Arsenal, AL Siren History

Sat May 14, 2016 5:06 am

Just found this photo of the old Madison, AL city hall, showing what I believe was a Federal Type B siren behind it. I had posted another photo of this siren before, but this one's in color:
Image
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Re: Madison County & Redstone Arsenal, AL Siren History

Sun May 15, 2016 12:03 am

About the thing of warning sirens.. Get a new controller, its usually the problem. And as far as lightning strikes go, I've heard of mechanical sirens that have been fried from a lightning strike(one example is being sold in the "For Sale" section titled "SHFS Sirens for Sale", and it is a Model 3). If you don't want you sirens hit by lightning, install lightning rods in various places, like lots of places do. The siren driver's may blow, but its just simply a driver. Drivers can easily be replaced.. But then again, if you bought a speaker driver replacement, since Driver's aren't always too different, You may as well be buying an entirely new siren since if you replaced the controller AND the drivers, the only thing left is the horn.
I own: One complete SiraTone, another SiraTone control module, a 1600W MC, 2 old ATI controllers, 2 round ATI horns with drivers, a ATI-DSA 4 thing, a Federal Signal FC, AR timer and Siratrol, and a small CD&F.

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Re: Madison County & Redstone Arsenal, AL Siren History

Mon Apr 22, 2019 2:57 pm

Sorry for the bump, but the grissom high school siren. Was it ever moved a few feet or did it always have the exact same location for all the type of sirens it had? I'm trying to say was the pole ever reused for each siren?

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Re: Madison County & Redstone Arsenal, AL Siren History

Thu May 02, 2019 8:37 am

Fries wrote:
Mon Apr 22, 2019 2:57 pm
Sorry for the bump, but the grissom high school siren. Was it ever moved a few feet or did it always have the exact same location for all the type of sirens it had? I'm trying to say was the pole ever reused for each siren?
I think the old siren would've been on top of the school, like the one at Huntsville High School was.
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Sean juth
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Re: Madison County & Redstone Arsenal, AL Siren History

Thu May 16, 2019 3:33 pm

Fries wrote:
Mon Apr 22, 2019 2:57 pm
Sorry for the bump, but the grissom high school siren. Was it ever moved a few feet or did it always have the exact same location for all the type of sirens it had? I'm trying to say was the pole ever reused for each siren?
Are you from the Madison county area?
PLEASE DONT TAKE ANYTHING I SAY SERIOUSLY!
Sean C
I own a whelen 2800 cell, a busted beyond repair 2904 (used to be a 2909) and a black whelen 400 watt speaker driver.
I want the model d from Paint Rock Alabama
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FireAlarmTechGuy4477
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Re: Madison County & Redstone Arsenal, AL Siren History

Tue Feb 22, 2022 4:36 am

r4tbolts wrote:
Wed Nov 11, 2015 1:40 am
When did quick call come about ? Looks pretty cutting edge at the time. In my neck of the woods we were still using the landline loop dialer till the early 80's. Nice pics.
The first known appearance of Motorola Quik-Call Selective Signaling (2+2 Paging) that I know of is in 1949, I own 5 of these original Quik-Call units, 3 in working order. If you want to learn more please contact me.

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