The Siren Board

I currently have the Model 1 that let the smoke out. I have seen from various people on the board that they had overheating problems, but as far as I can tell no one has ever confirmed it. I've ran that siren plenty of times, setting it off for 2 minutes of straight alert for a tornado drill and running it for about a minute of alert and attack back to back. When I checked the motor after the tests it was warm, but not "fry your hand to a crisp" hot. I know that the siren was taken apart and worked on by the previous owner, and I'm sure Ed Wise did some work on it when he still had it besides just repainting the cover. Wise shot the video years ago. When I asked him about the siren smoking he said he couldn't remember what caused it. It runs fine now though.

If they actually did have some overheating issues I haven't seen it with mine. It wouldn't surprise me if there were cases of it though. These sirens are a almost 2 times the size of a Model 2 and obviously has a motor rated at half the HP. The rotor in them is 9 inches in diameter. It weighs about twice as much as the 2 as well. Federal Electric also apparently shipped them wired up in reverse. Reversing the direction of the rotor reduces the resistance and would take load off the the motor, so it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that reversing the direction of the rotor was used to mitigate an issue with overheating, even if it meant the SPL would take a hit. I've wanted to break mine down and rewire it to spin the correct way, but I avoided it out of paranoia that spinning it the correct way could potentially put too much strain on the motor.

Even with it spinning the wrong way it's still close to the output of a Model 2 and hits just over 100 dBc from 100 feet and 70 dBc from 1000 feet. Since the majority of the trees at and around the area of my mom's house were taken out by the tornado earlier in March it might be able to reach a further range now. I'm not going to try that for a while though, since people are still worked up over the situation. I could feel the tone it puts out in my chest whenever I stood within 20 feet of it while running. The motor's rated at 5000 RPM. At its fastest mine hit roughly 4600 RPM and ran at about 614 Hz after cleaning the old grease out of the bottom bearing. That particular run I used a short extension cord with solid copper wire cord connected to the siren itself to get as much voltage to it as I could. I ran it with extension cords at my grandparents house, so the voltage drop through the wire caused it to lose speed and drop to about the pitch of a typical Model 2 or other 10 port mechanical siren. The drop wasn't enough to set fire to anything or trip a breaker, so I left it that way.





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lIQp-3fMoA



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRfOxsBYGXY

From what little about the model 1 I found, I've heard about it having overheating issues (hence the smoke), matter of fact DJ2226 actually owns one, perhaps it might be a good idea to ask him if his Model 1 overheats or not.

Edit: Ninja'd but still, I'm not even remotely believing that Model 1's were overheating that bad, I'm more or less betting that either the "smoky" model 1 had some issue or whatnot (causing it to let the magic smoke out) or unless it was something else.

Like said it only did it once and never again, indicating something either got really hot or something or ground up into dust.

Having a rotor assembly that size on a motor that is half the horsepower of the Model 2 which is lighter and has a smaller rotor is just asking for trouble in my opinion.

Chem_Boffin_6589 wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 30, 2019 8:35 pm

Having a rotor assembly that size on a motor that is half the horsepower of the Model 2 which is lighter and has a smaller rotor is just asking for trouble in my opinion.

That may possibly explain why the Model 1 was so short-lived, it depends also on how heavy the rotor is, if the rotor was too heavy it would not be surprising at all if the motor frying was a common occurrence about this particular siren.

Chicagosiren-hunters wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 19, 2019 2:48 am

Since this thread was bumped, here's another Model 1 in the wild; located in Blairsburg, IA. I swung by there last Saturday on the way to Webster City, and it looks to still connected...granted only to a simple switch.

According to Google Maps, there's a lumber and paints store at the site of this siren now. It looks like it's the site of a former fire department, and so it's probably safe to assume that the lumber place isn't going to be using the siren. It might be worth asking the owners if they would sell it. If I'm ever in the area I might try to do that actually.

Here's the google maps location.
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4820202 ... 312!8i6656

According to Google Maps, there's a lumber and paints store at the site of this siren now. It looks like it's the site of a former fire department, and so it's probably safe to assume that the lumber place isn't going to be using the siren. It might be worth asking the owners if they would sell it. If I'm ever in the area I might try to do that actually.

Here's the google maps location.
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4820202 ... 312!8i6656

Well that’s good to know...I may have to ask!!