Cheesy thrill: I just drove past an operating T-Bolt

[weasel2htm]

I'm driving back to the office and hear an "noise" rolling down the window, turning off the radio and looking at the clock confirm; Siren Test!!! I decide to do something insane, with some "slightly crazy" driving (In the company van ), I attempt to get to the fire station to drive past it while the T-bolt behind it is sounding. I get to see the horn rotating, siren is to my right and the left window is down. Just as the horn is getting to pointing at me, (I'm trying to time my speed so the horn will get to me) the siren winds down, I don't think it ever pointed perfectly at me, but the sound bouncing off the houses across the street from the siren and coming in the drivers side window was nothing short of impressive! A reminder how intense a T-bolt is.

This is the closest I have been (partly by choice) to an operating T-Bolt in 20+ years, I have mentioned before coming out of a restaurant and getting the full blast from a Thunderbolt 1000 that was 50 feet away!, This was nowhere near as intense, but gave me a nice little taste of being near a siren!

[Oldiesmann]

Hearing a TBolt up close gives you new appreciation for just how loud those things are. I got blasted by one years ago before I was really into sirens - I happened to arrive at a local thrift store with a TBolt on top of it at noon on test day.

[Urbanexplorer]

Hearing a TBolt up close gives you new appreciation for just how loud those things are. I got blasted by one years ago before I was really into sirens - I happened to arrive at a local thrift store with a TBolt on top of it at noon on test day.

If it was the Salvation Army in Norwood, I've been in that building during test day as well, a number of years ago. Not a pleasant experience!

Deciding to sit in a car 50 feet away from the 1000T at Beechmont and Markley wasn't a great idea either.

[Oldiesmann]

Hearing a TBolt up close gives you new appreciation for just how loud those things are. I got blasted by one years ago before I was really into sirens - I happened to arrive at a local thrift store with a TBolt on top of it at noon on test day.

If it was the Salvation Army in Norwood, I've been in that building during test day as well, a number of years ago. Not a pleasant experience!

Deciding to sit in a car 50 feet away from the 1000T at Beechmont and Markley wasn't a great idea either.

That's the one

[weasel2htm]

Part2:

I heard the sirens wind up, I was closer to the fire station this time than I was last time, However when I got close, I was again trying to time my speed to the horn, but the person in front of me needed more lead in his right foot.... I still got a good feeling for the power of that thing though from what was coming off the buildings across the street, I thought "maybe I can get the the 2T22 by the National Guard" Sadly, the test ended about a block too soon for me.

[rdfox]

Got blasted by the downtown T-bolt in Battle Creek (the one on top of the Transamerica Tower) from uncomfortably close twice before I started to get into sirens, actually. First time was when some brilliant soul decided to schedule the regional high school band competition at BC Central High School (maybe a mile away?) on test day; my school's band was about a minute into our five minutes of examination of the music for the sightreading competition when the sirens were fired up and it was suddenly loud enough that we couldn't hear anyone talk. (We ended up getting credited some extra time to compensate for the time lost to the test.) Second time was a test day when I was downtown, running errands with my father, and was in a street running perpendicular to the direction to the siren, about a block away from it, with a glass-walled building on the far side from the siren. THAT... was earsplitting, particularly since I wasn't expecting it.