How do I help encourage my 9yr old with this interest?

[mgjarvi]

Ever since a few months ago when my 9yr old was very startled by an emergency test of our towns siren he has been hyper focused on learning about models, tones and patterns, etc. He's told me ALL about it. I don't see any books available, im not sure where to go looking for content, he has been studying YouTube videos. He found the siren in our town on Google earth street view, now he wants to find others. This is a foreign topic for me. What are some good sources?

Thanks!

[Eclipse DDS]

Good to hear he's interested! Unfortunately there isn't too much information out there about sirens and such, however Snowpix's Siren Wiki is a very good place to read up on a lot of the models! The official ARS Wiki is not in full working order yet I believe, but it's under renovation.

https://civil-defense-sirens.fandom.com ... irens_Wiki

Offline, there isn't too much aside from listening to siren tests in-person, but every year enthusiasts meet up in Rhinelander Wisconsin for the annual Siren Convention! You can find footage of the previous events on YouTube if you're interested and want to see what the previous events have been like.

Here's a stream 0f 2024's event:

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

Hope I could be of assistance!

[Greenrid]

If he wants to know where other sirens are located, there are many, many siren maps on Google My Maps that can be found for almost any area possible. There's a large thread that can be seen here with all of the most up-to-date siren maps for all of america and some other countries, too!
The only problem with this is that there isn't really a good way to search up siren maps anymore. Google decided that maps shouldn't be shown at the top of the list, and only things talking about it. The only good way of finding sirens is by using the thread I talked about above. As a bonus, there's also a lot of good topics on this whole board that he could look through to get some more information that isn't on the CDS wiki!

Siren maps: viewtopic.php?t=27945

[ArxCyberwolf]

Good to hear he's interested! Unfortunately there isn't too much information out there about sirens and such, however Snowpix's Siren Wiki is a very good place to read up on a lot of the models! The official ARS Wiki is not in full working order yet I believe, but it's under renovation.

https://civil-defense-sirens.fandom.com ... irens_Wiki

I wouldn't use the CDS Wiki. It's in the process of being moved over to ARS, and articles are being deleted as they're moved over. The ARS Wiki is entirely usable by now, most articles just don't have images yet. I'd use that instead.

[Eclipse DDS]

Good to hear he's interested! Unfortunately there isn't too much information out there about sirens and such, however Snowpix's Siren Wiki is a very good place to read up on a lot of the models! The official ARS Wiki is not in full working order yet I believe, but it's under renovation.

https://civil-defense-sirens.fandom.com ... irens_Wiki

I wouldn't use the CDS Wiki. It's in the process of being moved over to ARS, and articles are being deleted as they're moved over. The ARS Wiki is entirely usable by now, most articles just don't have images yet. I'd use that instead.

Ah right, I never realised it was being dismantled as the articles are transferred. Just out of curiosity, how long do you think it will be until the site is fully updated?

[ArxCyberwolf]

Ah right, I never realised it was being dismantled as the articles are transferred. Just out of curiosity, how long do you think it will be until the site is fully updated?

Well, considering it's pretty much only myself doing the moving over of pages, it's gonna be a while. There's still over 150 pages with images I need to manually move over and it took me most of a day just to move about 20. So far all ACA and ASC articles have been moved over, but Federal, Whelen, Sentry and a bunch of misc articles still need to be moved.

[HDN]

Ever since a few months ago when my 9yr old was very startled by an emergency test of our towns siren he has been hyper focused on learning about models, tones and patterns, etc. He's told me ALL about it. I don't see any books available, im not sure where to go looking for content, he has been studying YouTube videos. He found the siren in our town on Google earth street view, now he wants to find others. This is a foreign topic for me. What are some good sources?

Thanks!

I think you coming here to post is a good start

There are many siren manuals freely available all over the internet. If your child is technically-inclined, there are pictures in the manuals depicting the signal patterns, siren installation, and exploded parts diagrams and graphics for maintenance instruction. You can even visit Federal Signal's website to download PDF manuals for their current siren offerings.

Some manuals I find interesting are:
Federal Signal Model 2
Federal Signal Thunderbolt
Federal Signal Thunderbeam
Federal Signal 2001
Federal Signal 3T22
ACA P-50
ACA Hurricane

As for more online resources, there's the Civil Defense Museum (http://www.civildefensemuseum.com), which has pages dedicated to warning sirens, some of them restoration projects, others history.

There's also a website dedicated to the Chrysler Air Raid Sirens, which were sirens powered by a Chrysler V8 Hemi. (http://www.victorysiren.com/)

If you both end up chasing down siren tests, I suggest having some hearing protection available, especially if either of you are sensitive to loud noises.