We Stink!

[Marmalady]

Yeah, 4 radial engines at throttle are fairly noisy

That's not noise, that's music.

I have been known to turn the death glare on anyone who so much as whispers while I'm listening to a Lancaster fly over (oh, those Merlins)

[Sapphire Silk]

Speaking of interesting landing patterns, I need to comment on a couple of them, one of them related to the original point of this thread....

First, there's San Francisco. <snip>

Then there's San Diego. <snip>:

I'll validate both of those, having flown into both airports.

San Diego scared the pants off me. I look out the window and there's a SKYSCRAPER right outside the window! Holy crap!

[emax4]

There's a girl at a corner store I frequented who told me that her bf lived right next to a fire station where the fire whistle was right outside his window. Unless he was a heavy sleeper, I can't see how he put up with it.

[Jester]

http://youtu.be/CVdMySWfAIQ

That lady was an idiot, and the truck owner made the mistake of trying to be reasonable with her, when she was clearly unreasonable and irrational.

San Diego scared the pants off me. I look out the window and there's a SKYSCRAPER right outside the window! Holy crap!

Yep. Even forewarned, when I looked out my window and saw that thing passing not that far below us, without even realizing I was doing it at first, I lifted my butt out of my seat. That is just TOO close. Even weirder than the "water landing" at SFO!

[Chromatix]

I was just reminded of an old radio play that I stumbled upon the script to once. It was easy to find again - and here's an interesting snippet from the first scene:

NARRATOR : There is something else. Let's take away some of the noise - take away the bombs and aircraft--

(They are taken away.)

Hear anything else now? . . . No? Then cut out the explosions and the bells and the crash of buildings.

(Only the sound of gunfire is left, splitting the air with noise. Then - suddenly - between two salvoes, is heard the distant familiar whistle of a shunting engine.)

THE LISTENER [softly] : A railway engine. . . .

NARRATOR : A railway engine. Concentrate on it. Forget the rest. . . .

(The blitz noises are gone. The Listener hears only the distant, perky toot-toot - and after a moment the clank-clank of shunted waggons. It is held for a few moments as a soft background.)

NARRATOR : A shunting-engine. Clanking trucks. . . . Comforting in a blitz, isn't it?

THE LISTENER [slowly] : Yes . . . it is.

Wartime propaganda, of course. The play was written and broadcast in 1944, several months before D-Day, and the transcript was also published as a booklet that year.

[dragon_wings]

The house my dad's mom had my whole life was next to a rail road track. As the years went by it was used less and less but I still remember the train whistles fondly.
My parents' house is on a street that dead ends on a street that for a while runs parallel to a rail road track. There are homes off the parallel street that you have to actually cross the track to get to (and these houses are right on the lake too).
The town we live in puts on a Fourth of July parade every year and one of the signs it's starting (at around 9:30 am) is two county sheriff helicopters go up and down the parade route (the main street from the area) several times. It just occurred to me that there are almost certainly a few complaints every year (in addition to all the illegal fireworks set off-illegal in this county at least).
Then one of the neighboring towns has the area's airport and a Tennessee Air National Guard base. My family owns a business on the flight path of the airport (if we're flying in from a certain direction we always make sure to look for it. ^_^). There are a bunch of neighborhoods behind the base and airport. I wonder how often people complain. And how quickly they're made too look like the fool they are.
Having lived near rail roads (in TN) and in a few busy neighborhoods of Baltimore I can't sleep if it's quiet. Unless I have ear plugs in. :P (roomie sleeps weird hours and makes a lot of noise when she's up. Sometimes she interferes with the sleep I need for work.)

[Merriweather]

I hate hearing all these storeis where people have had things shut down that were in place when they bought their house. Seems to me, who was there first wins, period. Or at least, they should. Should be up to a person to check things out in advance, not move in and try to change them.

When we bought our first house, I read a lot of articles on home buying, and one thing they always stressed was to check out the neighborhoods, and pay attention. Train tracks mean trains - check to see what the normal schedule is if you don't want to be woke up at 2am. An airport means planes, check what types fly in and out and how often, even ona small airport. Nightclubs & restaurants mean evening noise, etc. etc.
One suggested going back to check out that quiet little neighborhood on Saturday night - the house next door that seemed so very nice in the day might be a major party place every weekend. I remember looking at one house, and noticing that the local high school was round the block - and one of the fields (can't recall which one) actually abutted our back yard. We did a bit of checking, and it wsan't just scheduled games (many at night), but also practices, as well as practices for the marching band! Since we live in an area with mild weather (open windows spring & autumn) we decided we didn't want to have to use headphones to hear our own music above the brass bands, LOL.

You can't check too much before buying a house, it isn't just the house you have to live with. I remember one person I knew decided a few months after buying that they were going to put it on the market and move again - they'd checked out the house, and the neighborhood quite well. But what they neglected to notice (and what bothered them quite a bit) was the fact that there was no way to reach their nice little neighborhood without driving though a really trashy section of town.

[Lovecats]

This reminds me of when we bought the house that we live in in Illinois around 30 years ago. We had looked at one that was right next to the fire station in town and decided that we didn't like that one. The one we ended up buying was across the street from a water tower - the village had well water. What we didn't realize was that on said water tower was a siren that went off when there was a fire and every Tues at 11 am they had a tornador siren test. Did we complain and insist they stop that? No, we just got used to it. It wasn't that bad.

[blas]

Gar...I moved back home a couple of months ago, and my parents are about a half a block away from train tracks. Which, for years, were pretty quiet, until a new sand plant was built. Ever since about last year, there's trains coming and going all the time, even late at night.

It's a pain in the butt to hear that roar going by, and I won't lie, it still scares the shit out of me, because when they come from the one direction, you only get one blow warning......and that's enough to send me to the ceiling, but I can't really complain, can I?

[RealUnimportant]

All the time I spent living with my parents was next to railroad tracks, and we had 3 houses in that time. We were just used to it, and took advantage of the cheap real estate pricing.

I can get by with regular traffic noise no problem, but anything unexpected will still get my attention. What really stops me sleeping is music loud enough for me to try & work out what it is, or what the lyrics are; it engages that part of my brain that likes to know these things... So I know not to try living next to a nightclub!