Thunderbolt 1000t in Mason, TX

[bigtuna7O]

I've never seen anything posted on this one before, but there's a 1000t out in Mason, TX (2.5 hours northwest of Austin) I drove out to see today. She's not in the best shape, and I've read a couple notices from the city regarding their "old siren" that frequently requires manual activation and miscellaneous servicing. Regardless, she was a refreshing sight. Central Texas is pretty blah as far as sirens are concerned (IMHO).






I enjoyed the PVC blower pipe jury-rig













Not the tightest security, I mean anyone could just...



...open it and, oh I don't know...



...oh yeah, it was tempting...


There's also a disconnected Model 5/7 adjacent to the courthouse


And this bird-feeder on the east side of town

[MOStormChaser]

It's interesting they have the rotator turned off. A few towns here in Missouri do that as well. What puzzles me is that the "Control" switch is on test, and the Chopper and Blower switches are on automatic. I guess that's what they mean by "manual activation".

[SoundMaster 391]

Well thats not the best way to lock a RCM panel. Any curious kid could untie that, open the RCM, and sound the Thunderbolt off by accident. Actually our HI-EMA locks the RCM the same way as this one but the RCM is enclosed by a wooden box with a lock on it. Just can't get why they won't get a lock for that RCM. They're not that expensive. Also those are some interesting vent holes.

[bigtuna7O]

Well thats not the best way to lock a RCM panel. Any curious kid could untie that, open the RCM, and sound the Thunderbolt off by accident.

It's definitely what I thought when I found it, certainly one of the easier RCMs to access I've found. I guess they manually test so often that it's all right there, setup and ready, with the assumption being the layperson wouldn't have any clue what the thing is or how to access/activate it even if they did.

I also wonder if the rotator is turned off intentionally to warn the west end of town (the direction the horn faces) because the Sentry covers the east. Who knows.

And yeah, them vent holes were neat-o

[murrfarms]

I feel fairly sure that one of those boxes on either side of the big disconnect switch contains some sort of switch, which is probably a standard light switch similar to what they had set up on the Thunderbolt in Amber, OK. You can see two wires attached to the two control terminals at the top-right that obviously go somewhere via the main conduit nipple between the RCM and disconnect, which is reason to suspect that one of those boxes is the "control" for it. It's probably inside the more "generic"-looking one on the left since the one on the right contains a breaker under that black cover that's likely for the 120 volt circuit that powers the outlet and whatever is in that larger gray box below.

Disclaimer: if anybody here gets the "great" idea to go find out and set it off, I didn't say anything!