The Siren Board

As promised, I went out and recorded one of Battle Creek MI's rotating ATIs, despite the heavy snowfall. Apparently Calhoun County doesn't test attack anymore, so just alert for this video. This snowy siren is between a water tank and a small cemetery near the intersection of Beckley and Capital Ave on the south end of town and was about 5 minutes late. As I was setting up, one of the volunteers that goes and checks the operation of their assigned siren showed up and parked directly underneath it. I will be completely honest here, I had fairly low expectations for this siren due to so many people saying how terrible they are, how unreliable and ineffective they are, etc..., so I decided to actually go hear one in person. Luckily it exceeded my expectations, and was actually pretty loud. There was also no high-pitched squeal before it went off either, which was weird. More details are in the description.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSg04Z3FTL0









Battle Creek, MI siren map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid= ... sp=sharing

Link to this siren's location: https://www.google.com/maps/place/42%C2 ... :0x0?hl=en

Congrats dude! Its amazing to record a siren that is doing alert, which is rare on this siren! Awesome dude! Thanks for record this! Also, you should find that siren doing whoop, since that is a uncommon tone! But considering how far Whelens travel.. it could be pretty far away.

Valtonus wrote:Congrats dude! Its amazing to record a siren that is doing alert, which is rare on this siren! Awesome dude! Thanks for record this! Also, you should find that siren doing whoop, since that is a uncommon tone! But considering how far Whelens travel.. it could be pretty far away.

Thanks! I know that nearby Galesburg has Whelen 2750s, but I'm not sure where the nearest one would be at. Next time I'm down there I'll look around though!

I expected it to pack some punch. The array might not be as effective as the one Whelen uses, but 1600 watts in one direction should be at least a little potent.

DJ2226 wrote:I expected it to pack some punch. The array might not be arse effective as the one Whelen uses, but 1600 watts in one direction should be at least a little potent.

I know some people probably won't want to agree with me here, but I would honestly put this almost on par with some of the 4000s and Vortexs I've heard in Mt Pleasant. I was impressed to say the least.

Honestly, I hope all 4 of these get recorded eventually! If all 4 work.. maybe those HPSS16-R's are not bad after all!

There is a mid-sized omni Whelen in the rail yard just east of Bailey Park. That's roughly 3-ish miles from where you were. It would make sense for a rail yard to be using whoop.

Valtonus wrote:Honestly, I hope all 4 of these get recorded eventually! If all 4 work.. maybe those HPSS16-R's are not bad after all!

I hope for the same as well! As far as I know, Battle Creek hasn't had any issues with their ATIs. A while back, if I remember correctly, they had an issue where more than half of their sirens did not activate for a test, but the activation system was at fault and not the individual sirens. I also wonder why they stopped testing attack. In the video on YouTube of the TransAmerica tower t-bolt from a few years back where you can hear the volunteers report back on the operations of each siren, they mentioned all 4 of the ATIs and said both modes (alert&attack) tested normally so we at least know they are set up to run attack, but I guess the county just doesn't anymore.

Notre.Dame1003 wrote:There is a mid-sized omni Whelen in the rail yard just east of Bailey Park. That's roughly 3-ish miles from where you were. It would make sense for a rail yard to be using whoop.

The whoop I was hearing was southwest from where I was at, leading me to believe it could have been one of Galesburg's sirens. I couldn't hear any of the Thunderbolts or 612s during the test, so I doubt I would have been able to hear an omni Whelen from up near Bailey Park since I was way down near I-94.

Galesburg would have been to the NORTHwest, out by Fort Custer. If the siren running whoop was off to the southwest, that's more out towards Climax than anything else, but I'd think that would be too far away to hear.

Used to live right about 4700 feet from that siren (G-maps puts the total distance at 4713 feet to the middle of the driveway) and 4500 feet from the one at the rest area, and I must say, from there, I could only barely hear either one if I was outside during the test. Maybe they've added a new unit down south of there as a gap-filler? Somewhere around B Drive South would make sense, and probably be audible from there...

rdfox wrote:Galesburg would have been to the NORTHwest, out by Fort Custer. If the siren running whoop was off to the southwest, that's more out towards Climax than anything else, but I'd think that would be too far away to hear.

Used to live right about 4700 feet from that siren (G-maps puts the total distance at 4713 feet to the middle of the driveway) and 4500 feet from the one at the rest area, and I must say, from there, I could only barely hear either one if I was outside during the test. Maybe they've added a new unit down south of there as a gap-filler? Somewhere around B Drive South would make sense, and probably be audible from there...

You're right, I was a bit turned around. I'm still barely familiar with the area even though I've practically grown up there. Although I'm not 100% certain what I heard, it sounded like a Whelen in whoop for about a minute, followed by about 10 seconds of alert afterwards. I'll go down there again soon and look around.