for all interested. don't worry did me due diligence :D informed the immediate neighbours id be running it a handful of times. however i did underestimate how loud it would be through 2 brick walls haha! but hey ho! fine for a blip but definitely wasn't gunna get away with practicing somewhere over the rainbow on the theremin for 5-10 minutes, contrary to the vids, i aire on the side of caution with that sorta crap ha. so on the hunt for somewhere to do that! will likely block one side off and see how it fairs with one tone, as you know the are dual tone and might not work well with the scale, but tbh without both tones it would sound like a siren trying to play somewhere over the rainbow haha.

@deezwaffles558

9 ай бұрын

Maybe in the middle of nowhere

@danielsanichiban

9 ай бұрын

Sample pack please

@HOLLASOUNDS

9 ай бұрын

I think there are laws against using devices like this in the UK.

@timballam3675

9 ай бұрын

@@HOLLASOUNDS No specific legislation but under Control of Pollution Act 1974 a local authority or an individual in a nearby building may take action where noise from premises amounts to a statutory nuisance, that would require them to keep a log etc so if you don't do it too often you would be grand!

@SomeKindofWizard

9 ай бұрын

The moment you pulled that sucker out of the boot and put your hand on it I felt this just, surge of fear. Met a bloke who'd basically pulverised his hand in a siren smaller than that, catching it as it collapsed a shelf. He caught it palms out, fingers right in the housing, broke all four fingers and basically flattened his knuckles. Something that big I'd figure easily rip the bastids clean off.

I can't decide whether Sam is the best possible person to own an air raid siren, or the worst possible person to own an air raid siren, or both...

@Benzene265

9 ай бұрын

Yes.

@STUCASHX

9 ай бұрын

Also yes.

@MrMilarepa108

9 ай бұрын

Yes.

@simon-james

9 ай бұрын

I agree, yes.

@DEATHTOTHESHITTERS

9 ай бұрын

Maybe. Maybe not.

Turns out an air raid siren is a bit loud. Who knew?

@btarczy5067

9 ай бұрын

Makes no sense to me... No matter how loud they make these, the pilots ain't gonna hear squat. Maybe they should have really bright flashing blinking thingies instead, I don't know. Sorry for being intentinally stupid )

@JamesTK

9 ай бұрын

@@btarczy5067I know right. So inconsiderate for the raiding pilots. Great big illuminated targets for them would be much better!

@tehweh8202

9 ай бұрын

Seems like a sort of pointless machine... how would you know if planes are coming, with that loud siren drowning out the sounds of the planes.

@JamesTK

9 ай бұрын

@@tehweh8202 I know. Microphones and big speakers!

@laurensa.1803

9 ай бұрын

@@tehweh8202Early warning...?

Appropriately, Air Raid sirens like this are used for Tornado warnings in the US Which really makes the "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" cover idea even better

@basmatine

9 ай бұрын

Where I live near Detroit, the tornado/air raid sirens come on every Saturday at 1pm for testing.

@JimmyHagerstrom

9 ай бұрын

In Sweden they run it the first Monday in the month 3 in the afternoon. We call it "Hoarse Fredrik"

@CommodoreFan64

9 ай бұрын

​@@basmatine I use to live in KS right outside of Wichita, and they would test the WWII era sirens on Mondays at 2pm every week just before, and during Tornado season, the first time I heard that it scared the crap out of me as I was doing yard work on my day off from work, and my ex got a good laugh out of it 😅

@a_Fax_Machine

9 ай бұрын

1st Wednesday of the month at 10am in Minnesota. It apparently gives newly transplanted residents a heart attack lol. They're not drum type like this anymore though

@Halo1Buff

9 ай бұрын

​@@CommodoreFan64Now we do it at Noon on Mondays

Sam not owning any ear plugs is simultaneously the most surprising and most unsurprising thing

On an air-raid siren like this, you can directly control the volume by controlling the amount of air that passes through the rotors. You could do this by strapping a wide brand around the perimeter of each rotor housing. Simply sliding the band to cover more or less of the port area would change the volume. As a bonus, the less air you let pass through the rotors, the less load the motor is under (and therefore less power). If you want fast speed control, you need a variable frequency drive that supports an external braking resistor. The bigger the drive you get, the more braking power the drive can handle. So in this case, it may be beneficial to get an oversized drive with a huge chunky external braking resistor.. The braking resistor is usually several hundred watts capacity (or more). On bigger drives the braking resistor can reach the kW range. Your current drive is likely trying to dissipate the braking heat internally, cooking itself.

@JessicaKStark

9 ай бұрын

Yeah, covering like 80% of the slots would definitely help I think.

@fairguinevere666

9 ай бұрын

Could probably also add a mesh over the open bits as a safety device too? Keep fingers out. But not before filming what happens if you stick a carrot in!

@bigjd2k

9 ай бұрын

Or it’s pumping the DC rail too high and cooking the caps!!

@antonliakhovitch8306

9 ай бұрын

An idea that contains slightly more latent fire: Run your VFD off of a bunch of parallel LiPo cells (with large caps across them for good measure), and dump the braking energy back into them. That'll get you a portable system that's also pretty energy efficient.

@antonliakhovitch8306

9 ай бұрын

And, for good measure, an overcomplicated idea- Build the same system, but in the mechanical domain. You'd have a motorized flywheel connected to the rotor through a CVT. Depending on the gear ratio, you can transfer energy between the siren and flywheel in either direction. An optical encoder and PID controller would then allow accurate pitch control. Utterly impractical, but maybe if you get a collaboration with Top Gear or something

You know you've reached peak punk (or maybe peak metal?) when one of the instruments you play is an air raid siren.

@notthebees4961

9 ай бұрын

And the other is a car

@francoism1926

9 ай бұрын

King Crimson played an air siren at the end of 21st century schizoid man when playing before The Rolling Stones in Hyde Park in 1969

@georgem6651

9 ай бұрын

Ahem... Two Tribes 😅 kzread.info/dash/bejne/ooNlqqVxoKvAp5M.htmlfeature=shared

@ETA555

9 ай бұрын

Do you know what frequency it generates?

@ToyKeeper

9 ай бұрын

@@ETA555It does more than one frequency at a time, and they change with the velocity of the parts, which change with the input power.

I wonder if you could add some servo-movable vanes to get different pitches. Oh, yes and some mesh over those finger slicers of course!

@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER

9 ай бұрын

Those vains aaah I see so the opposite way to the Yamaha music sirens! Intervesting

@agurdel

9 ай бұрын

Isnt it the number of holes that defines the pitch and not the size? Covering part of the holes might change the volume though.

@mikeselectricstuff

9 ай бұрын

@@agurdel I was thinking have an external sleeve with a different number of vanes that could be selectively opened and closed - should at least be able to do some harmmonics

@alebret3

9 ай бұрын

there are sirens that do have shutters to mute on of the two tones, just lookup "broadmoor escape siren" as for the changing of the pitch, the best bet is to do what sam just did and hook up a VFD, but the combinations of both could be great and no covering the finger chopping holes won't change the pitch, it will quite it down a bit, just like the shutters but more controlled

@FM60260

9 ай бұрын

@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER You should try and find some shutters off a Klaxon Signals/Secomak CS8 so you can open & close each one individually.

Sam had the local elderly hitting the floor for this one 😂

I saw that siren for sale yesterday but couldn't get wife's permission lol At least its gone somewhere where it will be appreciated!

@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER

9 ай бұрын

Don't think it was for sale yesterday? Must be another one

@LordDragox412

9 ай бұрын

Must've been a fire sale.

@r00kiet80

9 ай бұрын

Jeah right he bought, picked it up, filmed the entire video, edited it and uploaded it in less then 24hours Obviously it cant be the same one...

@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER

9 ай бұрын

i did in fact pick it up shoot and edit the vid in under 24 hours, but yes, agreed the sale about a week ago, so it wouldnt be the same one. @@r00kiet80

A soundproof and most importantly finger proof box seems like a great idea :-)

I would love to hear the phone calls when Sam calls around studios to ask if its ok to rehearse with air raid siren :D

@danyrogers4220

9 ай бұрын

abbey road has shown interest

Absolutely fantastic. What made it for me were the tissue paper ear defenders being blown backwards 😂

@AileTheAlien

9 ай бұрын

😅Even before that, his _hair_ was blown backwards at lower power!

I love Sam's boundless enthusiasm for anything he collects. You know its going to be a good video

There used to be a public air raid siren at the end of my garden. It was always such a thrill as a kid if I was at home when it was tested once a year.

5:01 to 5:12 I don't know what to think of that eerie silence and the smirk laugh after such a statement. Fond memories?

Those things could be found on top of towers at retained (non full time) fire stations over here up until fairly recently before they switched to pagers - they were used to call out the crews and there are still a few of them about. they are very loud (as you found out) and can be heard miles away.

@hjalfi

9 ай бұрын

I live in Zurich, Switzerland, and there are still sirens here which get tested every year. They're mainly in case of a dam breach in the valleys upstream from Zurich, although there are other tones --- most Swiss buildings have nuclear bunkers in the basement, for example...

@JackieBright

9 ай бұрын

a lot of areas in Tornado Alley in the US use air raid sirens for tornado warning and test them every week

@Jasper_S

9 ай бұрын

Coming from the netherlands and hearing a siren like this while on holiday in the czech republic in the middle of july, had us in panic for a good half an hour 😅 untill we found out the sirens are used for the fire stations. Gave me a first hand experience on how expats and Tourists feel when its the 12 o clock on the first monday of the month in the Netherlands...

@JessicaKStark

9 ай бұрын

My town still uses one for the volunteer fire department because we live in a really mountainous area.

@LordDragox412

9 ай бұрын

@@JessicaKStark My city still uses one for the volunteer fire department in a really flat area. Nothing better than when it goes of at night and wakes everyone up (it's located ~1.5 miles from the center of the city). The only people that can sleep peacefully at night live on the other side of the town, that's how far the sound travels.

I have to say, this was not something I expected to see at the museum, but I’m glad you got it. Good luck with building a box for it.

The MrMattandMrChay KZread channel has a great playlist of 14 videos detailing their search for the Broadmoor hospital sirens and some others. Includes being present when they were tested each week! They were two-tone sirens with doors over the ends to give an alternating tone which was nice and spooky!

A volunteer firefighter around here *did* lose a finger in one of these. Not just stories.Better put some wire mesh over it, especially during the experimental phase...

@Chester200100

9 ай бұрын

Were they playing with one or testing it cos i only seen these mounted very high up, where is very hard to even attempt to put your fingers into one.

@atkelar

9 ай бұрын

@@Chester200100They were testing the new one on the ground before hoisting it up to the "tower".

@Chester200100

9 ай бұрын

@@atkelar Makes sense, our volunteer fire brigade siren has a protective cage, and nobody (that i know of) lost their fingers in one.

@atkelar

9 ай бұрын

@@Chester200100 usually, that's how it works, yes. I didn't understand it for the longest time, cause as a kid I thought it was just a speaker of sorts. When I first saw a real one, it dawned on me.

Stuff like this is why I'm a patron, who wouldn't want a freakin' air raid siren!!! Rock on Sam

@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER

9 ай бұрын

thankyoui!

An attack siren, as i call it now, can be musical in the right hands. Delia Derbyshire, known for her arrangement of the Doctor Who theme, was a war child. And so, when she heard the All Clear siren, she thought it was the first electronic sound she heard. A B and a minor third up (similar to a G chord) rising up from a low note pretty much astonished her. You can make a similar sound with a monophonoc synth. Use two saw oscillators, tune the second one up a minor third, turn up the portamento, and play the lowest note, then hear it rise as you play a B note. Step down a few half tones, then back to B again, and so forth and so forth.

Nice! I have a French M15 tank siren, which is 24v but runs on 12v. It has the same action. I plan to install it on the roof in my van : )

You could put it in a transparent vacuum box. if you pull enough mbar it should reduce the loudness of the siren and people can still see it spinning. just an idea.

@MarcFresko

9 ай бұрын

Brilliant!

@BLOCKsignallingUK

9 ай бұрын

I wonder if it would overspeed in a vacuum.

@kaitlyn__L

9 ай бұрын

@@BLOCKsignallingUKit won’t be a 100% pure vacuum so it should be alright

@MB-nk5lr

9 ай бұрын

@@BLOCKsignallingUK it might turn faster and change pitch. to be sure you could control the rpm of the motor and then even tune it back to original frequency I suppose.

@kc9scott

9 ай бұрын

@@BLOCKsignallingUK It’s a 3-phase motor (or so it appears), so it’ll never turn faster than the AC frequency. That being said, I have no idea how, in its original application, they got a slow/graceful acceleration without using a VFD.

Federal Signal in the United States built upon that basic electromechanical siren design with the 3T22. It featured a 10/12 chopper with projector horns and solenoid valves to block airflow creating an alternating wail or hi-lo tone (which is popular for all-clear or summoning volunteer fire departments/brigades... as y'all's say in British English)

Fitting that after the test the sound levels of Sam's voice were much lower in the video. Probably emulating what you would hear after annihilating you eardrums with this thing ^^

that is way more responsive than i ever thought those sirens would be, I thought it would've been like as responsive as the theremin on the car. And i have to admit, the lower tones coming from the siren actually has a nice synth-like ring to it. Shame you didn't test the cucumber-slice functionality on it :P

these air raid sirens owe their existence to a Hollywood disaster film. In the early years of sound in movies there was a film about a strong wind. A sound effects technician realised if you stretch silk across a gap then spun it at high speed it made a wailing noise a bit like the wind, when he fixed a motor to it, it created a high pitch wail. On the rotating drum he had stretched silk, later on he tried thin metal blades and discovered it was louder. That was the birth of the air raid siren, early sirens used compressed air, or steam, with the silk fan you can hand crank it to make the noise. The metal bladed version was similar and cheaper to mass produce, then later electric motors were used.

When you turn of the inverter, that motor stops almost instantly. All that momentum has to go somewhere, so I imagine it causes a huge strain on the electronics of that VFD. Go gentle on the speed changes and it should last you much longer.

4:22 That's a 1st generation 10-note Yamaha Music Siren (ミュージックサイレン), but it's on top of the Tokiwa Main store (トキハ本店) in Oita Prefecture, and not the Yamaha headquarters in Hamamatsu. It uses electromagnets to open and close the shutters, with all 10 rotors spinning at a constant speed when the shutters open and close. By default they stay closed during start up and shut down, and they open in patterns to play musical notes. Source: have been researching these Yamaha musical sirens for an extended time period.

I assume that Japanese warning sirens are quite different to British ones, but early Japanese music sirens happen to look like 3 British sirens in a row. Later Japanese musical sirens look quite different. Suggest you use ear defenders like siren buffs do, and have fine grilles over the slits and the ends. The Royal Observer Corps had hand cranked sirens, and these had grilles to prevent finger chopping.

If you were to use a Mini-Cooper, would it be a Theremini?

As late as the nineties there were air raid sirens like this still in place on the roofs of the local swimming baths and a closed colliery ether left over from ww2 or 50’s civil defence .

This bloke has the most 1980s face EVER. His face, the 80s lad haircut, the cheerful, friendly attitude, the lack of any “persona” and a very tangible air of TRULY knowing his stuff. Why would I say he knows what he’s doing? Because I’m like him - born in the 70s and raised in the 80s and 90s here in the Midlands of England, and was left to my own devices to build and experiment, DECADES before the know-it-alls of the internet ever had a voice. ❤ Not to sound arrogant, which I detest, but being who I am, I know a Billy bullshit when I see one (most people online who claim “expertise”) and this lad *ain’t one* - one can just feel it inside - he’s a good egg and knows his stuff, believe you me!! Having been in some serious legal issues myself, as a teenager, for my lateral thinking-powered activities, and I’ve taken more things apart in 40 years than most of you have had hot dinners. This chaps a good lad.

Your DJ headphones (unplugged) would give you better noise reduction than just tissue paper stuck into your ears, and you really need a bigger, badass inverter to meet the power rating of the siren's motor. But, on the positive side, if Wagner can demand anvils tuned in the key of F for the opera "Das Rheingold" at the Bayreuther Festspielhaus, (or Verdi can write the "Anvil Chorus" in Il Trovatore) why not try to make an electronically tuned air raid siren for use as a musical instrument!

@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER

9 ай бұрын

Tissue was fine. The dt880's didn't work as well I tried. And yea but you work with what you've got. The inverter was fine I just need to mod it with more reservoir caps which I'm doing tomoz

@freeculture

9 ай бұрын

The cannons at the end of the 1812 Overture are also tuned no? Who said classical composers didn't do industrial 😄

We had one of these in the RoXy which was a nightclub in Amsterdam..I remember it's lethal, mental, and so much fun

I took a quick look at Amazon and all of the air raid sirens have a small cage over the finger openings. You could tap some screws and safety the sht out of the siren. ❤

@2112jonr

9 ай бұрын

Who knew it? Amazon actually DO sell air raid sirens !!! 😀

I used to play a Makita electric screwdriver on the building site. When you press the trigger, the harder you press - the higher the note. You can also use their perforator as a bass instrument.

7:05 the MVP of this episode, that trolley taking all the weight of that behemoth and the vibration, like a champ.

What an awesome bit of kit. We have a hand crank air raid siren at Lincoln City FC that use to get cranked for corners, not heard it in ages though. Amazing that it can be heard outside that far away at half power.

My procrastination was bloody unbreakable, but you just gave it a good kick up the arse!

Oh man I love this. Such a nice rich tone. And powerful, of course. The recording from outside was hilarious.

What an amazing bit of kit. I wonder if you could control the volume by throttling the air going in, after all it's a squirrel cage fan - reduce the air intake. ?? Would also reduce the load on the motor and therefore the inverter.

OOOOOOO, how GROOVY!!! I had a Federal model 77 dual tone fire truck siren that I used to blow every new year. It is smaller but much higher in pitch, although not nearly as loud.

Oh Sam I had to comment I love that sticker on the side window "look mum no ecu" that made me giggle🤣😂👍🏻

I’ve always wanted an air raid siren like this but I have no idea why. I’m glad I’m not alone.

I believe you quickly turning the frequency down to zero caused a lot of backfeed into the VFD and that probably isn't too good for it. To prolong its life, turn the frequency down slower next time. Don't know if I'm right or wrong, just my thoughts!

@BenjermenB

9 ай бұрын

Probably right, it spins down WAY too fast when he lets off the 'gas', usually it would take 10-20 seconds to spin down that much

That part with the waving tissues was iconic.

Had one on the fire station just up the road when I was a kid . Weirdest day was when our house got on fire and our neighbour went running past our house answering the call. The local volunteers saved the day.

You need to wire that into the pipe organ. "Why is this switch labeled 'Air Raid'?" "Oh."

I always found air fed sirens fascinating, they don't look like they should make noise but they really make a lot of it.

Lee Perry's cow sound was made by the start of a hand-cranked aid raid siren.

LMAO - how to piss off not only your neighbours but the whole town... 😂

I really enjoyed the sound from the car key going into and opening the trunk somehow. Very nostalgic! 😅

In order to stay true to the theme you probably should try to find a bunker to play it in. 🙂

@JessicaKStark

9 ай бұрын

Collab with Colin Furze? ONly issue I think is that you'd need like... turbo earpro to not utterly destroy your hearing.

@martin_mue

9 ай бұрын

@@JessicaKStark Don't think Furze bunker is deep enough for this one. Maybe if the neighbours are on holiday. 🙂

Sam, awesome!!!! Alot of incorporating possibilities for sounds....

If you block off the air flow it'll draw less current, which I think would make it spin faster, I don't know that motor at all but it seems like the kind that would spin faster. If you built a contraption to control the airflow to the rotors, that could let you access higher pitches with lower power draw, and you might be able to use that to modulate the pitch faster, downward at least. I'm imagining something like a horn mute on a servo. Might even make it quieter! You could similarly make a contraption that blocks off some of the vents to change their number and thus frequency. A series of sliding panels might even be somewhat playable just sliding them back and forth

That is awesome Sam, love it. I have used a couple of those Chinese inverters. They work fine but dont have the option of a braking resistor so when its slowing down it dumps all the energy into the DC buss. Try and find a chunky one that has pair of brake resistor terminals. Also not sure but it looked like you had the motor wired in star. Needs to be delta really for 220/240V as in the three links placed vertically on the terminals. Absolutely awesome 👊👊

Here in New Zealand we still have Carter sirens on fire stations, as an alert to summon the volunteer firemen in case of fire. They have text alerts as well, be the sirens are still a thing.

Every month on monday at 12 o'clock these sirens go off in my country (The Royal kingdom of the Netherlands ,lol ) Come and listen Tim !

Great vid, there's actually a WW2 siren bolted on top of the wall on the left just as you leave Charing Cross at the south end of the bridge just before Waterloo East.

I totally feel you man! This sound is one of the best out there! Rocknroll!

You will need armored cable after inverter. Inverters generate insanely of amount interference at all radio bands

maibe you can silence it some if you close in the sides a little , was thinking disk with a smaller center hole kinda chocking some of the airflow , might mean the motor draws different amps as it has to work harder / less hard not sure if it keeps the same pitch either

I would love to see a dB reading on that thing!

The galvanic reaction can be "cured" with permatex and paper. Specifically, you disassemble the thing (i'll detail how i did it below), clean every surface of the fuzz and make sure that there's no deformations using two calibrated stones ( brand new stones from the pack, you rub them together dry until the surfaces are flat between them). Once that's done, acid primer on both surfaces, two coats, then a thin, super thin coating of permatex. I rolled it with an engraving rubber roller. For the paper, i used old (satin) newspaper. The common variety doesn't work, but the smoother paper from financial newspapers (because you don't want to offend the soft hands of businesses men, SMH) is great for this kind of stuff. Reassembled, it should last quite a while, i used car seam sealer on the joint, to fully seal it up, then painted the whole thing. Guaranteed to never have that issue, in that form. The removal process can be tricky if it's corrosion jacked. I had to make a custom puller, a thick puck of steel with ACME threads in the center for a common garden variety jack screw and 20 holes on the perimeter for 20 (i'd use no less) legs that need to be bolted through the slots (can you guess how fun that was?) on the backside of the flange. I used heat with a long reach torch to heat up the hub because i could see deflection in the flange when i tried without it. One side didn't even want to budge, the other made an ungodly noise then fell off with a pop. 10:00 you can diminish the sound using a baffle. The little holes on the aluminium flange can be used to put a baffle there to cut off some of the air. If you do that, it will spin, but the sound will be lessened.

_"I say Gov, could you turn the warning thingy down a bit, can't hear the tele !!_ Love it!

We call them tornado sirens where I live. We use them when there’s bad weather of course like tornadoes are strong winds that are damaging.

I think your best bet is going to be finding a satellite building for the museum way out in the boonies, sticking the siren in that, and having a live feed of it in the museum proper.

That yamaha siren is known as the decatone siren made by yamaha, and uses a bunch of solenoids to cover he ports and make different tones with different port sirens. These sirens and all these solenoids are controled with special controls and timer.

Maybe a MIDI control ? Could be another organ stop

Great, now I am longing for an orchestra in the Royal Albert Hall playing EPIC music featuring something like 20 medival canons, a thousand voice drone synth and a theremine controlled air raid siren. Maybe throw in the organ and the furbies, just because... the heck, why not?!😂

Nothing says "heavy metal" like a cast iron (& aluminum) air siren - Funk yeah

You could make some Plywood baffles to rest rick the air intake and reduce the volume and load. Plywood circle that can seat against the outer rim of the housing and a smaller circle in the centre to allow a restricted amount of air in. This will reduce the load as well, although that rotor probably has a ridiculous amount of momentum in it anyway.

I recently 3d printed one and put it on a grinder stone and used it as my morning alarm. Family was not amused :)

Here's an idea: put the siren in the Mini (preferably the orange one), and make it spin based on the revolution meter of your engine, so it sounds like you have the most insanely high-revving engine in that car :P

We live near Round O Quarry were one wad used routinely before detonations. Siren... then quiet... then BOOM.... then a weird buzzing/vibration from the ground around you. I strangely miss it 😞

Given how they operate, a simple way to quieten or silence one would be to control the air intake. The volume is determined by how much air goes through it. No air = no volume. a disc on each side with a hole in it would enable some air through and therefore some noise from it, but at a much reduced volume.

7:16 Point blank. No earplugs. Just took it like an absolute champion.

@J19_vlogger74

4 ай бұрын

I was noticing that too. These create dangerously high volumes.

I had a similar glee when I acquired (quite for free) a pair of timpani drums. All I could play on them was "Mars, Bringer Of War" for weeks. But in a way, that was enough...

Love the ear protection.

I'm not sure a soundproof studio will do much. they are for like "loud drums" 🤣

@binky_bun

9 ай бұрын

Would be interesting to make a comparison measurement and find various different places to compare it like an anechoic chamber or a long way under ground

@dfgaJK

9 ай бұрын

@@binky_bun indeed. Even a long way under ground they have air vents 🙄🤔. Maybe a disused bunker with blocked air vents would do the trick, tho it'd be a pain lifting it in there. I wanna hear it running from the car while he drives through a tunnel 🤣

@binky_bun

9 ай бұрын

@@dfgaJK I was thinking more along the lines of a mine or railway tunnel but a mine might be dodgy as it could cause a collapse. Somewhere like a deep shelter or hardened phone exchange would be ideal. I think guardian in Manchester might be still active but I'm pretty sure Kingsway in London was sold off a few years ago. Not sure what they do with it now but a lot of places like that end up getting turned into mushroom farms. With a railway tunnel having open ends it might be interesting to see how much sound gets forced in that direction. Maybe find a disused one with one end blocked off. Theres a disused tunnel south of Alfreton station in Derbyshire that gets used for filming and stuff so could probably be rented and you can drive right through it

@dfgaJK

9 ай бұрын

@@binky_bun it was thoes exchanges I had in mind and a maybe possibly active one that I may or may not have been in was definitely well vented. I think the train tunnels would sound sick. But they are also vented with vents discreetly dotted all over the place. Imagen doing it in a train tunnel where it echoes up and out throughout a town so they think there's an air raid 🤣 you'd be in a bit of trouble I reckon 😆

@binky_bun

9 ай бұрын

@@dfgaJK especially in a town the size of Manchester. Actually there is one place that might be doable. Just south of Buxton is harpur hill industrial estate which was a munitions storage depot at one point and that has some tunnels. A good chunk of it is now the health and safety executive testing facility so I bet they even have the kit to do those sorts of tests too

Best use of a Theremin.

It’s not too loud until your neighbour’s are in their survival bunker thinking it’s the apocalypse.

It’s May 1984, the morning after my final exams at college in Cheltenham, I’m lying in bed with a hangover and one of these goes off. We are one mile from GCHQ. It was a mixed bag of thoughts…. Pleased we survived to enjoy Sam and his crazy stuff. 👍🤪

@freeculture

9 ай бұрын

And a new megalomaniac started a war of annexation again...

This is so cool! When I was a kid we lived across from the fire station and the siren was both terrifying and exciting. Ours was a Federal Signal 2T22, which rotated on a vertical axis and had horns mounted on every one of its openings, making it look a little like a piece of corn cob. I'm told they use an insane amount of power, and there might have even been a version that used steam too. There was a famous one in Chicago that used a big 1950s V8 to spin it, and I saw it on display somewhere. It was super loud, but I don't think it had that same scary siren chord we love.

@Shako_Lamb

9 ай бұрын

I've never heard of a 2T22 spinning before, they're supposed to be stationary, and they've never used steam. Maybe you're thinking of the Thunderbolt siren, which has one long square horn that rotates around and uses compressed air to generate the sound? It sounds like the one in Chicago might have been the Chrysler siren.

I love the fact that it sounds like a sports car mixed with a semi truck

0:52 'big' being a quite relative term 😂 6:30 that is surprisingly responsive

Watch out for the deceleration speed on your inverter. It needs to get rid of all the energy you put into the rotating mass to slow it down. So the acceleration speed should be close to the deceleration. It'll over-volt the DC bus in the inverter trying to slow it down if it slows too fast and that's probably what let the smoke (and liquid) out of the caps in the inverter. Many inverters have the option for a braking resistor. If you put one in then then deceleration speed can be increased as it gives it somewhere to dump that extra energy.

Sam's "Soundtrack to the End of The World" (tm) is getting ever so slightly closer to fruition.

I'm a big fan of air raid sirens, can't wait to see the next step of this project !

I am coming over to the museum this weekend.I was thinking i should bring my ear defenders as they are normally in the car. Now i definitely will bring them in 👍

My wife and I did a tour of the bomb shelter below Buda Castle in Budapest many years ago. As we were the only people the guide let us use the air raid siren that protruded out of a ledge overlooking the city. I have never experienced anything that loud in my life and only afterwards did it occur to me that the whole of Budapest would have heard the siren blaring out. Be careful with your hearing Sam.

We live just down the road from Carstairs national hospital in Scotland. They house some of the most dangerous prisoners in the country there. In all the surrounding settlements they have worked set up. They treat them once a month on the third Thursday of the month at 1pm. It's terrifying, even when you know that it's just a test.

Someone may have mentioned this already but if you restrict air flowing through this device (it's a glorified vacuum cleaner motor modified to make noise) that may afford you some electrical energy consumption as well as dampen the noise a little bit. This can be done by blocking off the intake on the rotor (also called the chopper) or like the Yamaha musical sirens it uses sliding baffles to cover the stater slots.

There are loads of interesting things to try with this ! As already said a mesh with holes smaller than a finger or better : a big cage around the whole thing, would be the best insurance ever for continuing to enjoy your 10 fingers for a longer time. About the volume : closing all holes but one or two per side will certainly be worth trying. I thought of something else also : changing the shape of the holes ! Making the rectangle smaller in one direction, the other direction, in both directions, ... 3D printing something another shape which snaps in a hole. 3D printing a thing on one hole to fit a pipe to it and send that strange air it to an air instrument (an organ pipe ?), ...

Man, you must have the best neighbours!

@4:16 "I've always wanted an air raid siren..." 😂

I had a little plastic one of these in my junk bin as a kid, NFI where it came from. probably about 6 cm diameter, little DC motor. I LOVED the thing, my mum HATED it. Dad was just glad I was out in the shed making things. but my little thing could easily fill the whole house with sound, I shudder to think what 4 kW could do...

That is literally and metaphorically terrifying. The sound of dread from my childhood! It's somehow fitting that something designed to signal doomsday is so damn dangerous!