Whelen 1200 strobe working right?

[Stevel1981]

I recently purchased a whelen 1200 strobe beacon, I took it apart and everything looks to be OK for its age. The thing is I'm not sure the relay or what ever fires the strobe tube is working right, it seems to flash sporadically, and there's long periods where you hear the caps charging but it just lingers and takes a bit to fire off.

I have a video of it, you can hear how off it seems, is this normal or is there a bad component?

 

[RS485]

Could you maybe get some pics of the underside?

I'm guessing the primary capacitors are original and will need to be reformed. Checkout page 45 here:

https://www.csobeech.com/files/WhelenInstallManual.pdf

for Whelen's recommendations.

You need to give those caps some exercise but you do _not_ want them to get hot.

In any case, I think that's a pretty cool beacon ya got there!

 

[JohnMarcson]

Probably capacitors as @RS485 said.

However, I have also seen this once with a failing tube. It is likely the capacitors, but rule out the flash tube as well. One of my 5200s did this and based on the newish looking tube I swapped capacitors. When I saw no change I went back and tried swapping tubes. That same tube failed to fire at all in another beacon. Replaced that tube and it worked fine. While this noise and behavior is much more indicative of incomplete charges (capacitor issue), the tube could theoretically be failing in a way that contributes to the behavior.

You should do as @RS485 stated and condition the capacitors, that's easy. Before replacing them I would see what if anything swapping tubes does.