Another great Thunderbolt. This one on East High school property in Wichita KS. There are still 62 of these tbolts left in Sedgwick county. See my other videos for one of these bad boys in attack mode.
When I was younger, so much younger than today... early to mid-1950's - this very model was erected on the Smith School Elementary School yard in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I can remember hearing it being tested for the first time. The sound scared the hello out of me as I was 6 or 8 years old at the time. Hope today's sirens will never sound in "Attack Mode"... Roy Lewis Atlanta, Georgia, USA
THERE. This is the one my town has a couple of! It's the same pitch. One is only about a quarter mile from my house. When i was a kid in the 80's that was the last thing i wanted to hear because i knew what it meant. A fact made too real when me and my family heard it while watching 2 funnels dancing about 3 miles from the house. Now to me it means...Grab the cameras and head out! :P
The hiccup is caused by the blowoff valve weights lifting up and down during the winddown, venting out air and causing the hiccup. Adding another weight to the valve will probably stop it.
I once met the guy who donated this siren- he got two of them from somewhere in Texas and installed them himself. He is personally responsible for maintaining this siren.
I finally was able to see this siren in real life in Denver, CO ( Considering I only live in Southern California and the only sirens I get to see are SD-10s and Federal 500s left back from World War 2 ) and since it was on top of a building it didn't look that big but i have seen comparison pictures of people actually inside the cone so it gave me pretty good idea anyways.
lol if i got to use the voice test on a whelen i'd do all the "THIS IS A TEST" stuff but then I'd say, "I AM A WHELEN, AND I REALLY SUCK." Thunderbolts 4ever.
I used to go to elementary school about 60 yards from one of those. They spun it up during lunch one day (scheduled test) and it was vibrate-the-floor loud. It's kind of funny that no one coordinated a bomb drill, though. It was during the height of 80's reborn nuclear hysteria.
2 hours ago, at 1:30, the tornado sirens (which are shaped just like this one, so I assume they were originally air raid sirens) were tested in our city. They were supposed to be tested Tuesday, but was postponed to today because of rain. Thankfully, it was (and is still) Spring Break for me, so I didn't have to go through all of that "duck-and-cover" stuff. But I have a bad feeling my school is going to do its own once I get back.
@97Siren I wouldn't be too sure about that. I believe that the early Thunderbolts had the "Tic-Tac bar", or the bars on the projector. Then, Federal Signal changed it to the screen on the projector. I'm not saying this couldn't be a 1952 Thunderbolt, but it could be a later Thunderbolt as well (1960's-1990).
my siren is in a town about a few miles away and it is only a fire siren. sometimes they sound a different siren as a tornado warning or to signal a holiday
@Thunderbolt1000T The school building it's located next to (where it gets its power from) has a three-phase service drop going to it, so I would assume the Thunderbolt is also three-phase, unless they just used two legs of it to provide single phase power to the siren. I'm going with it being three phase though.
You can occasionally find them on eBay for $2500-$3000 but if you can find a community that is updating to newer sirens you might be able to get one for a few hundred (if you're in the right place at the right time).
anyone in the tristates(missouri,iowa,illinois)if you're looking to record a t-bolt,there's one in a small town called bushnell,illinois.im not sure when they test it or if you're even allowed to record it.(im guessing you have to ask the fire department cause the siren is mounted at the fire station)just letting you guys know that there's a working t-bolt 1000 right there(oh and i should mention its next to a model 3!)as for how to get to bushnell,just google map it.xD
@ClarinetJordan15 It was made to alert the people of Americana about incoming nukes during the cold war. Now they are used for alerting people about disasters including tornadoes hurricanes, tsunami and other things. I LIVE IN ENGLAND
***** Even awesomer? The 6M blowers gave these a little more volume and I think maybe the 5Ms did too... Not so much for the single tone ones but for sure the dual tone ones. The 5M gave a dual tone siren a 2-3 DB boost and maybe a single tone one too? Who knows... But with the adjustable pitch you can get one of these sirens to carry further in terms of volume.
I heard from Ian Murr that the 5M did not give 1000's that much of a punch over the 4M.. But the 6M did. The 1000T's got more punch from the 5M, and slightly more than that from the 6M. Not necessarily because of output, as the 5M beats it in that regard.. (325 CFM for the 5M and 280 for the 6M). It's just the alow speed of the 6M (900 RPM) that gives generation A1 Thunderbolts, both 1000, and 1000T that distinct growl, and which is what makes them slightly louder than the rest of the series.
Carlos... He was talking to me when he said that. I also talked to FS. This comment is quite old... But FS did say that the single tone bolts were beastly loud especially brand new. Still beastly loud when they were older. The Thunderbolt is for sure a siren to respect as it is the first and loudest of it's kind (In C weighted DB.) Jeb and Ian both say that the single tone bolt isn't as attention getting as the dual tone ones and that it blends into background noise... But once in lincoln NEI heard this weird sound coming from outside. It was this single tone hum. It grabbed my attention right away as it was VERY potent and did not sound like anything from the background that I had ever heard! Well we opened the front door and then we could hear what it was. Turns out it was the thunderbolt 1000 (at twice the distance of the 2001s) and I could hear any of the other sirens until we opened the front door... So I tend to disagree on personal experience but that's why I ask for others experiences... To compare mine with theirs.
Lol! Yea. Some hurricane nuts will say the bolt is inferior but when you consider the easier fixing, The adjustable frequency (And the fact that the single tone bolts actually are louder... The hurricane may seem louder but it isn't. There is a video on youtube where you can hear a single tone thunderbolt from 9 miles away.) the easy installation and the WAY less power and size... It is just a much better siren. The thing with the bolts besides just being loud is that they are potent.
