Whelen WPS-4004 Siren Test - Montgomery, AL 12/4/24

Recording of this Thunderbeam: • Classic Siren Recordin...
After recording the 2001-SRN, James and I split to record the Modulator 6048 in Opelika, however when the system ran for the test it did not go off. It, along with the other electronic sirens in the county, appear to be inactive ATM. It doesn't appear that they run Westminster chimes on that system anymore, so if I had to guess when they stopped doing them the activation routine in the base station was thrown off some kind of way resulting in the electronic sirens not running. I haven't decided whether or not I want to update the video from that.
For the last test of the day I met up with David ‪(@freebrickproductions) at this Thunderbeam/4004 pair in Montgomery. The 4004 replaced the Thunderbeam back in the early 2000s as part of the county's final phase of replacements as they transitioned to a full Whelen system. There were videos of this siren YEARS ago doing a short alert, short attack, and actually doing voice announcements. It looks like at some point they decided to ditch the voice messages since they take so long to do and just went with doing full alert and attack for testing. Within the last year or so they shortened their tests to around 30 seconds of each tone, but they appear to be having radio issues. This siren, along with a good chunk of the system ignored the final set of cancel DTMF commands during the run of attack, so they continued to run for a full cycle.
Montgomery County test every first Wednesday of the month at 3:30 PM in alert and attack. Usually they test short runs of each tones, but since this system has effectively become Pandora's Box in recent months between the radio issues and off the cuff testing there's no telling what you get. lmao The system consists of all 4004s and replaced a number of Thunderbolts, Thunderbeams, and I believe 2001-SRNs. All of the ESC-2020 and presumably ESC-2030 equipped sirens have soft ramp ups like Columbus's system. There are also a few bases in the county that test every Wednesday at noon and have systems consisting of ATIs which replaced a Whelen WPS-2806 and ACA Screamers.

[@freebrickproductions]

Great video!

[@MichanaAlerting]

Never heard a 560hz with a soft wind-up before, and that's got to be the worst skipping ESC-2020 I've ever heard lol

[@ozzie_goat]

Sounds like the fast wail is having some pitch issues

[@DJ2226]

@@ozzie_goat the ESC-2020 logic boards are known to be somewhat unstable when they generate frequency sweeps. They kinda skip like a CD player with a scratched disc. 😆

[@ozzie_goat]

@DJ2226 Still not as bad as those old Modulators when they'd do that hiccup on wind down

[@WeirdAnxiousLuna]

rsh-10 inactive?

[@DJ2226]

Yes. The 4004 replaced it back in the early to mid-2000s

[@Thebest-m7b]

2 siren