Romeoville Illinois adding 2 new sirens

[remadog]

Here is the new modulator for it's monthly test. It got a little windy so the audio is not the best. I will repost a better video in the future.

Mike

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dkovl0GIxA

[Brendan Ahern]

Is it tested separately from the rest of the system? Sounds like it's a loop recording, does the operator have to keep activating it, or is it a one time activation? I have only heard Romeoville sirens in alert, were the rest of the sirens doing alert? Oh also, where were the thunderbolts you used to have located? Sorry for all the questions, I just really like that system!

[Chicagosiren-hunters]

**NEVER MIND, STUPID QUESTION** (just needed to look a remadog' s post).

[Gil]

Mike, do you have any info about the old siren system? I seem to recall seeing that the last Thunderbolt was taken down around 2005 or so.

[remadog]

Is it tested separately from the rest of the system? Sounds like it's a loop recording, does the operator have to keep activating it, or is it a one time activation? I have only heard Romeoville sirens in alert, were the rest of the sirens doing alert? Oh also, where were the thunderbolts you used to have located? Sorry for all the questions, I just really like that system!

All of the sirens activate together for the monthly test. The Modulator uses the alert tone but all of the rotating sirens use the steady tone. The Modulator loops the siren tone then the voice 3 times, although we are changing that to 2 loops this week. It was running the test a little long.

We had two T-Bolts in the past. One was at the Fairfax Avenue Water tower. It was installed in June of 1984 for $15,975.00.

The other T-Bolt was located at the Normantown Road Water Storage Tank & Well. It replaced an ACA Allertor in September of 1985. The Allertor was installed before my time and I always thought it was a cool looking siren until it took a direct lightning hit and blew the electric meter off of the pole and shot it across the yard. The new T-Bolt cost $16,735 to replace the Allertor.

This Thunderbolt was hit by lightning two more times causing public works to demand that we move it. It was then moved to Valley View School up the street where it lasted a few more years. It began to get problematic with site voltage problems so it was finally replaced with a DC2001.

[remadog]

We presently have a Thunderbolt that we are slowly refurbishing (with out the blower) to use as a display that we will eventually mount in front of our EOC on a short pole. It will hopefully show the history of our siren system and it's beginnings.

[Brendan Ahern]

So then on the activation console is there a "test" button then that tones out the whole system? I'm assuming the mechanicals run a full 3 minutes. How does it operate in an emergency? Do you have to select different options for the modulator or if you activate for a tornado warning, will the whole system go off?

[remadog]

We use a SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) two-way system that allows us many different ways to activate for tests and actual activations. We also activate over 100 indoor receivers in village buildings and one of the three universities that we have in town. This is a secure encrypted and time encoded system to reduce the vulnerability of hacking into the system by outsiders. I am attaching a screenshot of what an activation hotkey screen looks like. Sorry that I cannot show you the whole screen, but the rest of the screen shows data that I cannot share due to system information security.

[gman 1]

What in the world do the blue buttons in the center do? I know what they say, but what do they sound like?

[Stormsetter4]

That's the FS commander software right?