The Siren Board

FYI: Send the bad FC you removed back to Federal and get it repaired so they will have a spare. I keep a couple of spare boards handy so we can get a siren back up quickly if it goes down in storm season.

Is it one of the FC's with the silver box on the upper left corner?

Holler, It is one of the FC's with a silver box in the corner. Also, will sending it to federal cost very much money? Because the city is on a tight budget right now.

Yeah that's a later model FC, the silver box is actually the radio. Early ones had the radio made into the board making them a royal PITA to repair.

We send them in all the time and the repairs are usually $350-$500. Depends on what's wrong with it. Repair time is 2-4 weeks usually.

Perfect! I was worried that one of the older panels could go out. I will talk to the city and see if they want to have them repaired. I have 2 of them on one the capacitor thing in the bottom right corner exploded and the other one works but the siren would not work when it was hooked up to it.

Can you post a picture of the exploded capacitor thing?

Also make sure all the sirens have lightning arrestors on them (at the disconnect) and are properly grounded. Ground everything, including the enclosure for the FC. Surges will kill pretty much any unprotected electronic device. A lightning arrestor won't stop everything but it will clamp down when the voltage spikes above a certain level (usually 300 volts for a delta arrestor) and shunt it to ground.

Here it is. I took 3 pictures of it. Not sure if it is a capacitor but there isn't much left of it. Btw the box had rusty water in the bottom of it.

http://s823.photobucket.com/user/cruzne ... 4.jpg.html

Sorry for the bump, but due to the cold weather and the national weather service getting a grant from the FCC, the drill has been postponed to Thursday the 6th at 1:30 PM.