The Siren Board

Found this on the old board and scince we don't have any whelen recordings currently I'll post it
http://www.civildefensesirens.com/media ... 2_2006.wav
Its a WPS 4003 from St. Louis by Adam Pollak

That's a sweet recording. Very dense sound!

wow... is all i can say sounds pritty mighty for a electronic siren.

These sirens really are loud. Our Whelen Vortex R4 siren system here in Tullahoma can be heard for several mile outside of the corprate boundries(city limits). The center of Arnold Air Force Base is several miles from the city limits and they have reported hearing them breifly when the sirens were rotating near them. But Whelen's sirens are powerful and do get the job done.

boy sounds like this person was at point blank range...the whelen tones just blast out not like Federal signals which slowly get louder quickly so not to scare the pants off someone...ok I just had an evil thought hehe

Im not sure but I think he was at least a half mile away, if Adam Pollak is still around could you please specify.

I've recorded and been around many Whelens and I know for sure that he was not a half a mile away. He had to be just about underneath the thing to get a recording as loud as that. Electronic sirens have trouble reaching lengths of a half a mile or more. That's why when you're in a town with a totally electronic system, the sirens are installed much closer together than towns with electromechanical systems.

On the other hand, I love Whelen's low toned sirens. They are definitely the best sounding electronic sirens there are in my opinion.

All of our whelens here in Tullahoma are spaced 2 miles apart and can be heard fine throughout the city, and in some cases several mile outside of the city limits. We have 7 Vortex R4 sirens and they can reach about 12,000 feet at 60 dB

Hi all, I'm another newcomer to this board but I've been lurking for a length of time.
Anyway, I can vouch for the Whelen Vortex siren's loudness. I live just west of the Searcy limits and I can hear its sirens during test. The nearest siren is approx. 2.3 miles SE of where I live and on a good day with a light SE wind, I can hear the thing quite well.
Searcy has about 6 Whelen units. I can faintly hear 2 more besides the nearest siren (the nearest one to me usually is the last one to wind up / down).
I work at the hospital and there is a siren head just 300 or so feet north of the facility. During a tornado warning or during test, the thing gets pretty loud but not painfully so. It will get your attention very quickly!
Regarding their tests, they normally test every Wednesday (weather permitting) around 12:00, though recently they haven't been blasting them (maybe due to the very hot temps we've been having as of late It's been clear and hot during the last 3 test times).
The test is 1.5 minutes of alert and 1.5 minutes of hi-low (used as an all clear).

Actually, those sirens are fed with a signal that's very close to a sinewave. They operate at such high levels that they make nearly 10% distortion but it's still very nearly a sinewave fundamental which is the only part of a siren's sound that carries. There is no good reason why a sinewave fundamental produced by an electronic siren (which is actually an electromechanical system, just of an oscillating sort) cannot carry just as far as a sinewave produced by a mechanical siren with a rotor and stator, if the siren and the loudspeaker are producing the same frequency with the same acoustic power.