Electronic Siren Rotator Questions (Vortexes and EOW 612)

[Mister_Penetrator]

My question about the Vortex and EOW is why is it that the Vortex can only turn a full 360 degrees in one direction and then turn 360 degrees in another, where as the EOW 612 can turn a full 360, like the thunderbolt? Also, what does EOW stand for?

[Whelen Rules]

The vortex and all whelen rotating sirens oscillate to avoid maintence on the rotors, and doing so they are garunteed that there should be no maintence needed for the minimum 20 year life cycle of the siren.

[Gil]

They do this so that the siren does not need to use brushes,
therfore it requres little to no maintenance

[Rory Buszka]

The "Oscillating" design of the Whelen rotators allows the loudspeaker array to be hardwired to the amplifiers at the base of the pole. Brushes and collector rings such as those used by the Federal EOWS sirens oxidize and corrode, and need maintenance. The brush-and-collector-ring system is suitable for a rotating siren where the voltage is constant, but corrosion or oxidation of areas on the collector rings would cause some cutting-out and cutting-in of the signal if an audio signal was to be passed through the rings. So it is correct that the oscillating design allows the rotator to be maintenance-free.

[Elliott]

My question about the Vortex and EOW is why is it that the Vortex can only turn a full 360 degrees in one direction and then turn 360 degrees in another, where as the EOW 612 can turn a full 360, like the thunderbolt? Also, what does EOW stand for?

Electronic
Outdoor
Warning
System

To go along with Rory's reply, brushes in conjunction with a speaker system can be bad. If you guys remember the mini-siren I built, I used a gold-contact headphone jack as a slip ring setup, but I never motorized it. If I manually turn the speaker while it is on, it does crackle somewhat. I would assume a high powered unit would do the same.