Just posted this on my channel, Enjoy and subscribe!
Streethawk History video
- Thread starter mercurygrandmarquis1
- Start date
Yeah the strobehawk was such a odd adaptation. I have lots of tech sheets and an exploded view if you need them @mercurygrandmarquis1
Also @RS485 did some pretty interesting experiments with the double flash power supplies designed for the bar.
Last edited:
Nicely done. One thing you may want to mention in addition to the Streethawk being the first dual-level bar is the fact that it also, to my knowledge, was the first to stagger the rotators on each side. Instead of them being in line with each other, one is forward to the other. This allowed more effective intersection and side warning due to the fact that you can see both rotators from any angle.
The S&W did in fact have offset rotators. As far as being a selling point Federal made a much bigger point of mentioning this with the Vista because the MX7000 didn't have that feature. They did point it out prior to that in the streethawk though.
I think if they went with corner strobes instead of the 360 i think it would have had more punch
So for those asking about the strobehawk video I do have one coming, It's another one of my legacy content videos from the old channel. As for new content I do have an MX video coming as well as a vista video. In that order. Kinda tells the story of the evolution of dual level bars. However I'm trying to stagger out content to draw in more subscribers! @JohnMarcson do you have any more brochures or ad material of the vista or MX? I'm kinda coming up on a dead end on my research front
I have a decent amount of Vista material including order sheets, a catalog, and each full year catalog during its production. I did some vista videos that are in no way an actual full history
I have a good deal of Code 3 documents too. I have a few more strobehawk pieces of literature, but @RS485 did a really deep dive into the power supply.
The streethawk really "dunked on" ALL other bars by bragging about unobstructed 360 coverage with the lower light pods. Very shortly afterward the MX was like "hold my beer" and made the whole lower deck "usable". The streethawk only had stationary lights on the lower deck (intersection sweeps blocked the rotators and were up top on the streethawk). I can tell you that the MX7000 really was "the product to beat" for Federal, at least based on their marketing. Their Vision release video compared how noisy the MX7000 was compared to the Vision, then showed the MX and Vision side by side with the intersection lights not turned on on the MX. The Vista literature was big on the staggered rotators and the double thick center section which was really the only thing they had on the MX. The Vista was a straight MX clone aside for the thickness the "surfboard" design gave them.
I think Federal had better rotator design and should have focused on that more. The streethawk and independent aerodynic rotators were among the best ever (we won't talk ab out the independent jet rotators).
The strobe hawk was a misstep. It was essentially the Whelen 8000 (360 degree strobes in a rotator bar) in a time period when there were better strobe bars offered by Whelen (edge) and Federal (jetstrobe) and the Tomar's neobe stuffed in the jet shell under license agreement. The strobe hawk offered nothing that couldn't be found elsewhere except the power supply which relied on the idea of the double flash being equal strength pulses instead of high power with a low power trailer. As @RS485 could better explain, the science behind the "equal double" combined 3 studies in a way that debatably didn't really make sense. Even if the "equal double" flash was better, the electronics required to achieve it were complicated and really didn't justify the marginal (if any) improvement. The story behind the "equal intensity double flash" is really interesting and IMHO represents the point where Federal lost their chance to make strobes a big part of the Federal brand. Instead they just stuffed "meh" strobes into existing lightbars. I would argue Federal had to do the same thing with LEDs. While Whelen had the edge ultra and LFL to "slide" 400 and 500 series strobes out of and the same series LEDs into seamlessly, Federal was back to figuring out how to put their LEDs into products designed for halogen (jet, vista, and even aerodynic).
Regardless of people's opinions on missteps in the industry, the dual level bars were an interesting example of innovating in the "halogen age" and how advertising can only do so much.
Last edited:
Where I live, the city police started using Streethawk bars around 1990. They were red on the driver's side and blue on the passenger's side with a speaker grille in between. A few years later they switched to Streethawks with clear covers and red rotators on the driver's side and blues ones on the passenger's side. The light bars had speakers and they were connected to 1970s and 1980s era Federal electronic sirens.