ATI sirens really are crap!

[Jim_Ferer]

My office is in the EPZ. Not all of the ATIs are even erected. The one by the Beach Shopping Center on Route 6 only has a Penetrator. All the Penetrators are still in service.

My guess, FWIW, is that ATI is a company that designed a system to meet, or appear to meet, a specification at the minimum price. Designing to a spec isn't rare in lots of things.

Few companies or agencies who buy ATIs ever expect to use them in earnest. They're buying them because they have to buy something and so don't care about anything but price.

[Thunderbolt 612]

If the nuclear station wanted better quality electronic sirens, here are my suggestions:

Federal Signal-Modulator or DSA.

American Signal-E Class, I-Force, or Alertronic.

Whelen-WPS 2900 or WPS 4004.

NO WAY WITH ATI!

ATI: WORST SIREN MANUFACTURER IN THE WORLD!

[Justin]

That pic of those guys screwing around with the ATI with the Penetrator in the background is a classic. That Penetrator just looks like it's thinking "Oh brother...."

Yeah, that's what thought occured to me as well. It's almost as if you can hear the Penetrator say: "They chose this piece of crap to replace me?!"

Few companies or agencies who buy ATIs ever expect to use them in earnest. They're buying them because they have to buy something and so don't care about anything but price.

Which I find quite unfortunate. And they wonder why they get all of the attention when the system fails 'in a critical place at a critical point in time'.

It makes you wonder whether the emergency management department did any research at all. Even superficial. I'm sure they would have been questioning their intentions after what a stink ATI kicked up in San Francisco.

I wonder how the community is feeling, knowing that the system that's designed to warn them when the nuclear facilities near by fail, and that this 'system' was built by the lowest bidder. Not a nice and warm fuzzy one; at least to myself.

[Justin]

I'd like to know who all has tried to bring lawsuits against ATI. So far we have Indian Point Nuclear/Entergy and we can't forget San Francisco.

This one's fresh too!

:: Edit ::
It's old, but still good to hear.

[Pittsburg] Accepted Washington Electronics' $11,265.28 bid for the purchase of a storm warning system at Lakeside Park. ATI Systems out of Boston, Mass. had the lowest bid that met specifications, but city staff favored the more local bid at a cost of $203 more. Also, ATI Systems had not previously done any work for the city of Pittsburg, and the city would have to pay a technician to travel to Pittsburg in case of repair, thus negating the cheaper price.

http://www.morningsun.net/stories/12210 ... 1006.shtml

[Matt]

If the nuclear station wanted better quality electronic sirens, here are my suggestions:

Federal Signal-Modulator or DSA.

American Signal-E Class, I-Force, or Alertronic.

Whelen-WPS 2900 or WPS 4004.

NO WAY WITH ATI!

ATI: WORST SIREN MANUFACTURER IN THE WORLD!

ya but with the whelen's I would go with whelens 3016 4008 4004

[sirenman1bd]

I've never heard of ATI before viewing the report. They really are CRAP!

[ver tum]

I've heard that not only are ATI sirens built like crap, they also sound like crap. I just did a search on YouTube for ATI siren videos, with no results. If anyone has an audio or video clip of one of these in action, I'd like to hear how bad they actually sound.

I hope they just keep the ACA sirens in service. Those are good sirens, and I think it would be cheaper for them to do what they do here in Louisville, and refurbish their old sirens. We have Thunderbolt 1000T's here, and when one needs to be replaced, our Emergency Management Agency always has a refurbished Thunderbolt at the ready. We also have 2001's and Modulators, but they're almost always found where there had never previously been a siren before. I only know of one of our TBolts that was replaced by a new siren, an ASC Alertronic. Most of the time, all of our sirens work, and some of them are very old. So, if the ACA sirens at Indian Point still work, why replace them with cheap ATI crap? They would probably save a lot of money by refurbishing their older sirens like we've done.

The thing that scares me the most is that cities, such as Nashville, Tn, are going with the ATI's, and Nashville has had a lot of tornado warnings. Like another post said earlier, government officials should do research on sirens before they even buy them. The government officials are almost just as much to blame as ATI.

[SirenMadness]

Ah, this thread takes me right back to a long ATI-bash thread back in 2004! Good times.

Anyway, government officials should browse the Internet some more. Sure, ATI sirens are cheap, but there are many other sirens with a reasonable price... and they have quality. If voice signals were not a priority or a wish of Indian Point, which I don't think they were, Indian Point should have went with something like a Sentry or an omnidirectional Whelen. Hey, at least we didn't hear about any problems with the speaker drivers this time, did we? Wow, only corrosion this time! Inadequate volume and spotty performance are a trademark of ATI, though, at least in their business of sirens. Go to Sarnia and I guarantee that the Modulator and the EOWS* 1212s will drown the ATIs out.

I think that I even remember someone posting a story about a place replacing their ATI siren with a Modulator, a while back.

[ThunderboltFreak]

Heres one of thier product pages:

http://www.atisystem.com/products_osu.htm


Eww, look how cheap they look. I seriously couldn't picture myself buying
one.

[Justin]

Heres one of thier product pages:

http://www.atisystem.com/products_osu.htm


Eww, look how cheap they look. I seriously couldn't picture myself buying
one.

At more than several thousand dollars each, funnily enough; I can't either.