The Siren Board

LAPEER, Mich. ? For the second time in less than a week Lapeer?s tornado sirens have gone off without a tornado anywhere in the county and there was no reason for alarm.

http://thecountypress.mihomepaper.com/n ... again.html

How does the paging system manage to set off the sirens?

I'm also wondering why they need to get permission from officials in Canada to switch over to a digital paging system - Lapeer is a good 53 miles from Canada.

They should just use their 1003 in hi-lo as the pager instead

Oldiesmann wrote:How does the paging system manage to set off the sirens?

I'm also wondering why they need to get permission from officials in Canada to switch over to a digital paging system - Lapeer is a good 53 miles from Canada.

Don't know. Maybe it has to do with the Canadian telecom switch from analog to digital this past year?

I'll do some more research for details, but there are certain restrictions for setting up radio frequencies within a certain distance of the Canadian border.

But remember, the article was written by a reporter who probably doesn't have a very deep grasp of the technical details, and maybe just wrote something that has a decent sentence structure, but not any accuracy.... Just a guess..

Anybody kmow what radio system is used to set off the sirens?

kb4mdz wrote:I'll do some more research for details, but there are certain restrictions for setting up radio frequencies within a certain distance of the Canadian border.

Lapeer County is within the "A" Line, and has to coordinate all radio licensing with Canada. This treaty was implemented years ago, and is designed to prevent harmful interference on radio frequencies on either side of the border.

kb4mdz wrote: Anybody kmow what radio system is used to set off the sirens?

I believe they use the county fire paging frequency, which is 151.130 MHz.

Thunderboltlover wrote:They should just use their 1003 in hi-lo as the pager instead

ROFTLOL.

I know this is an OLD posted topic, but I've lived in Lapeer since around 2000 and the "for no reason" activation of the Thunderbolt 1003 downtown Lapeer has been happening since at least 2000 when I worked there. I personally remember at least incidents when it went off shortly following a flash of lightning. I don't know if there is a power surge issue in the building its controllers are located in or what. So, I'm pretty sure their issue, at least with the downtown Thunderbolt, may have something to do with electrical problems. Not sure if anyone will see this reply!!!

I wonder if the Thunderbolt in downtown Lapeer, is controlled by telephone line activation or radio control? River Forest, Illinois had a series of Thunderbolt 1000ATs that were activated by telephone lines to each siren. Sadly, the old AR timer didn't have a cancel function like the newer versions do. Every time there was a power surge at the control point, it would activate the timer; thus, setting the sirens off usually in attack mode. Needless to say, they finally spent some decent money on surge protection to the siren controls, and it finally solved the problem. I wonder if this is the case in Lapeer?