The only Thunderbolt in Park Rapids, located at the intersection of Mill St and Heartland State Trail, sounding Hi-Lo for MN SWA. This video was taken about 100 Ft. from the base of the siren's pole.
For 6:45 I decided to head up to Park Rapids and see this Thunderbolt once again, adding another video to my collection for the Thunderbolt Playlist. It was fun to see this again, though for some reason I can't ever seem to get a long test out of this thing. More videos of this have been appearing lately, and I even managed to run into another enthusiast completely on accident! This was my first time meeting Avery Gustafson, but I had known of his content before this, most notably the only video of the Swanville Thunderbolt for a couple of years. There's something about SWA that seems to bring new people my way, since I've now met people at Hayfield, Emmetsburg, and of course Park Rapids on tornado drill days.
I tried to set the focus to make it easier to see into the open solenoid when the horn rotates toward the camera, and it kind of worked. unfortunately the sun went under a few minutes before the test, and the lighting wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, but I still think this turned out overall okay. This particular thunderbolt isn't very interesting beyond it's open solenoid, being just another 1970s 4M 1003, but it was still pretty fun to see it again nonetheless.