downtube42

Novi was a little bit before my time. When I was pretty young, Jim Hurtubise would show up with his front-engine roadster and attempt to qualify - this was when rear-engine cars had taken over. Every year he'd have it a little bit faster, but not quite there. It seemed like he'd have it fast enough to have qualified the previous year, but I may have imagined that. Eventually they disallowed him from attempting because he was taking track time from people who had a shot. There was, IIRC, no rule that actually allowed them to do that, but they did.

The Chevy stock-blocks were incredibly loud. It would be like Scream, Scream, Scream of the Cosworths, then a godawful terrifying chest-thumping roar as a pushrod Buick went by. Maybe they were even normally aspirated? Don't recall. They'd qualify fast and blow up.

Good times!

genec

When I first encountered them it was at a gas station near a Wendys at I 10 and hiway 95... I heard all this mechanical squeaking noise and it took a few minutes to realize it was a tree full of these birds.

I encountered them again (just a couple this time) in a RV park in a nearby tree... very distinctive sound. Not bad at all, if just one or two birds. Sounds like a train-wreck when there is a whole tree full of them.

SurferRosa

Yeah, I know. But so many people are against capital punishment these days.

I-Like-To-Bike

When I lived in Germany 1997-2002, every Summer on several weekends I would hear a very loud sound like an extremely high pitched huge horde of buzzing bees that lasted for several hours. Might have had something to with living about 8 km from the Hockenheim Race Course when the Formula 1 races were being run.
I preferred to ride my bike there when it was quieter:

I-Like-To-Bike

So do the deer -
Last night at the window bird feeder:



This morning the birds are back after a 6" snowfall, and wifey put out fresh seed:

Clyde1820

During the initial shut-downs in most towns, in the U.S. during the first couple months of this Covid-19 thing, I was impressed by how much less overall noise there was. The distant hum and mild roar of traffic on the nearby highways had disappeared. The numbers of jet planes in the sky dropped by half (or more). In a few weeks, normal sounds of birds and insects seemed more vocal and consistently present. I heard the wind more frequently, in the leaves of the trees and the grass, as compared to before the shut-downs.

Indeed, all that transportation related traffic is loud. Nix that, and it's surprising how quiet most other things can be.

I-Like-To-Bike

Graveyards can be quiet zones too.

Stadjer

I live in one those quiet cities and I had a girlfriend there who lived next to a park. And in the spring around 4 o clock in the morning all those birds start yelling how horny they are. It is a terrible lot of noise and it kept me awake many times. Two stroke mopeds passing by was nothing compared to that noise. City councils should do something about those birds too.

work4bike

Nothing worse than sleeping in your tent at 3 am (on the Appalachian Trail) and a Whip-Poor-Will wakes you up with its incessant calling, right up until dawn. I yelled at one, one time...he shut up for about a minute....

Digger Goreman

I would have thought that nothing was better for advocacy than showing the benefits to both "sides" of a traffic conflict. But the usual car advocate(s) did his/their thing and devolved the thread into Foo....

Still, worth the effort.

Zinger

Yeah I remember Mickey Thomsons Aluminum Buick V8s. It inspired me to pull one in a junkyard without dropping the oil pan first to look around. Hell I didn't want to lay in the weeds and pre-paid the guy for it anyway. Well we won't be doing that again. When I got home I pulled the pan to find the cast crankshaft and all the main caps broken along with part of the block casting around the mains. Land rover bought that motor from Buick along with whatever tooling there was for it and had been using it if they don't still. Aluminum bodies better have Aluminum motors and those better have steel sleeved cylinders.

And it still inspires me to post one of the late Mickey Thompson's roaring Buick Indy cars in the Beautiful noisy car thread.

BTW, The Mickey Thompson stock block Indy cars were normally aspirated. I believe all of them, as there was a displacement limit on supercharged motors. They eventually outlawed his later streamlined cars with the body out to the outside of the wheels.




It was the Novi that had the centrifugal supercharger in front of it and sometimes a 2 stage system later. Then Granatelli made an even bigger supercharger especially for the Novi and a couple of them still had the first stage turbocharger in back. So some of them had been a two stage setup like high altitude fighter planes had in WW2. I don't know if those ever finished the race. The "screaming Novi" was known for it's own signature sound whether it had the turbocharger stage or not. He also had taken over Paxton when Studebaker went under. They had bought McCulloch superchargers and renamed it and put their belt driven version on Hawk Gran Turismos and Avantis as an option..

SkinGriz

Great neighbors.

50PlusCycling

I live in Central Tokyo in a high-rise building, and the background noise never ceases. On top of the usual traffic, my neighborhood is a Mecca for exotic cars, which make incredible amounts noise even at slow speeds. Then there are the speaker trucks, these can be politicians running for office and making campaign speeches, recyclers looking for people wanting to get rid of stuff, or the Yakuza-Nazis who play old military songs while screaming propaganda at full volume against Russia, China, and Korea. Then there are the frequent public announcements warning people to be careful with fire, or to use their air conditioners to avoid heat stroke, or tests to the PA system. Then there are the party people at night who leave the bars and restaurants laughing, yelling, and often screaming. Add police, ambulance, and fire truck sirens.

On occasion we travel to America. I built a house in the middle of nowhere in West Texas, it's off the grid, so in order to make it efficient enough to be solar/battery powered, the walls, ceiling, and floors are extra thick, and the windows are all double pained. This more or less soundproofs the house, and the West Texas hill country is already deathly quiet. Outside I can hear an occasional train passing on the tracks which are more than 20 miles away, inside it's so quiet I can't sleep at night because I can hear the sounds of my heart and body.

downtube42

Back when i lived in West Texas, I took some Indian coworkers out in the country for visit. A couple of us rode bikes, the rest arrived by car. The guys were so utterly astounded at the emptiness. They were lying in the road, posing, snapping pics for family back home. There was not a single vehicle in the hour or so we were out there. To them it was inconceivable.

Clyde1820

It's one of the beautiful things about the United States, even today. "Country" can be much like it was 100yrs ago, completely separate from the typical "city" life. To the point the noise disappears and you can begin to "hear" the silence around you. The sound of "the grass growing" is a bit of a stretch, but it's amazing how one can hear the sighing of the wind, rattling of small pebbles and grains on the soil, the rustling of the leaves in the trees, when there isn't any noise from vehicles, planes, etc.

My favorite part of America: that part one can find when heading several hours away from the nearest cities and towns. It's a completely different place, wherever that happens to be. A connection to a simpler time and pace of life.

RubeRad

Interesting.

I was going to say here in SoCal where there's no rain to make lawns grow out of control this is not such an issue, but you proved me wrong. I guess because La Jolla is so rich they all want luxurious fairway-quality lawns and are able to pay gardeners to fight the actual local climate for them year-round

noisebeam

Hired landscapers and gardeners always push for more water use.

I-Like-To-Bike

At least they are quiet and never complain about maintaining your behavior, property or lawn to their standards.