I've just gotten 'into' old sirens a few months ago, at age 57. I bought my first one off Ebay a few weeks ago, which was simply advertised as a Federal air-raid siren, with no housing and no ID tag on the motor. I took a gamble as to it being single-phase by the 2 heavy wires on the motor, in addition to the 4 smaller ones.
Now that I have it, I can see that it is a capacitor-start induction motor. The 2 heavy wires (#6 or so) are the run winding, and the two sets of 2 smaller wires (#14 or so) seem to be each of the two start windings, which I find a bit unusual. One small wire from each group was pre-connected to each the heavy wires, leaving 2 small wires loose. So far, I've applied 120 volts to the motor, with a 500 uF capacitor in the start winding circuit (2 loose small wires), and gave her a few good growls, everything looks good with the motor, which I imagine is designed for 230 volts.
But I would like to find out what the proper capacitors, potential relay, etc are for this unit. Most of what I found online shows Federal using repulsion start, or series wound brush motors for their old single-phase sirens, rather than capacitor-start. Perhaps this is not a Federal? The rotor and stator sure look like the Model 5/7's I've seen, but I haven't seen any with this style of motor. Any ideas?
This is my first time posting on the Siren Board, so if I'm doing something wrong here, I apologize in advance! (I accidentally clicked the "img" button, and it now says "img is on", whatever that means!!)