The Siren Board

I like that diorama. That looks good!

Awesome diorama woody.

The model 5 is great, but my favorite is the antenna tower!

Thank you all for your kind words about my diorama.

I assembled and painted one of the Ralph Radcliffe Thunderbolt kits today. It still needs to be decaled and weathered and I need to find a better spot for it than stuck in a piece of styrofoam.

Ralph only includes one control cabinet but I took a piece of .060 styrene and made enough for a city full of thunderbolts in about a minute.


1:87 Thunderbolt Model by woodyrr, on Flickr

@landmobile:

The radio tower is an adaptation of the stock LED tower kit offered by Richmond Controls. He modified the components to my specifications to operate like towers around here. This one has a photocell located near an outside window. During daylight, all four lights simultaneously strobe clear. During night time, the top and third from the top red LEDs wink slowly on and off while the second from the top and the lowest of the four burn continuously. It is captivating to watch especially if you catch it transitioning from daylight operation to dark and back.

Awesome! I have never heard of a scale model tower that follows the day/night transition before.

Ever since the FAA allowed high intensity daytime strobes in lieu of red and white marking, many tower owners have opted for the strobes (which cost a lot less than a paint job). The problem is that they are too bright for use after dark, so most systems incorporate a switch to multi-flash lower intensity strobes behind a red lens, or LED's, for night use.

I spent my afternoon last Thursday replacing a strobe tube and its associated high voltage circuitry at the top of a tower in Bristol, PA. I should have taken some photos.

That model T-Bolt looks great, Woody! I should be getting mine in the next few days. That's how I'll be mounting mine as well, as far as the blower box being on the ground. That's how they are around here.

Back in the late 1950s or early 60s, whenever St. Louis County Civil Defense installed a system of T-Bolt 1000s throughout the county, the blower boxes were mounted about 6 or 7 feet off of the ground, where the bottom of the blower box was mounted directly to the telephone pole, whereas with your model T-Bolt and the other real T-Bolts I've seen the bottom of the blower box is sitting on a concrete pad.

Have you thought of giving it a light coat of Testor's Dull Cote? That's what I did with my other Ralph Ratcliffe sirens, after weathering them somewhat and adding the CD decal to the Model 5.

That's some neat info about your model radio tower!

I forgot to ask, but is your Model 5 supposed to be a fire siren, since it's red, or does it double as a tornado siren as well?

I've seen a lot of Thunderbolts in Kansas with the blower mounted up in the air on a platform attached to the side of the utility pole.

I brush painted the model. I'll wait to weather it until I have the airbrush out. I'll Dullcoat it before I plant it.

I don't really have a back story for the model 5 on the fire station. I probably painted it red because Midwest City's original fire station 1 had a red GCS model 5 on top of it. I don't know what they used it for. I never heard it before they tore the station down so they could build station 2 in its place.


Station 2 by woodyrr, on Flickr

The blower boxes I was referring to weren't mounted on wooden platforms, but instead were mounted directly to the telephone poles. Thinking back, they looked odd compared to the T-Bolts that had their blower boxes sitting on the ground on a concrete pad. Those old T-Bolts are all gone now. I wish I would've taken pictures of them.

I have a scratch built Thunderbolt in my avatar, approximately HO scale. Not having the dimensions, I winged it.
Nice to see (a tad late, though xD) that I can purchase a Tbolt kit.

I got 2 of the STH-10 model 5 model 2 kits and posted about it
http://airraidsirens.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10084

I also got 6 Thunderbolt kits.
I've been experimenting with the first one.

Here's 2nd try



Here's 3rd try and repaint (pallet matches the one in the manual)