Anyone who has attended an Astoria High School Fishermen home win, watched a cruise ship depart or celebrated New Years Eve on the Astoria Riverwalk might have heard of James Carruthers.

Or at least heard his horns.

The 74-year-old Hammond resident is a self-professed audiophile, and with the help of a growing accompaniment of roof-mounted ship horns, has been sounding off on special occasions in Astoria since the 1960s.

The noise comes from giant horns mounted on his gray Dodge Ram truck.

When I was a little kid and up through teenager, noises would startle me if I didnt expect them, said Carruthers, son of locally famous equipment manufacturer Eben Carruthers. Because I kind of shied away from noises when I was young, maybe I was trying to compensate for them.

And Carruthers compensates in grand fashion, more than three-quarters of a ton of air tanks and other equipment to operate Decibel No. 3, the latest incarnation of his changing lineup of horns, stacked into and onto his truck. His setup includes one KM Airchime and two Swedish Kockums Sonics air horns, putting out an estimated 120 decibels.

It sounds like a locomotive horn at full volume and a ship horn at the same time, he said. I think a monster trucks probably a little louder than my horn.

Carruthers, an Oregon State University graduate with a bachelors degree in general science, keeps five large air tanks in his truck bed pumped up to power the horns, which were originally devised as a mobile tsunami warning device. Self-taught through trial and error, Carruthers put together most of his horn system, from the pipes mounted on his roof, through the hoses rated for 5,000 psi and into the valve system he devised to control all three horns separately.

One of Carruthers favorite pastimes, since his freshman year of high school, has been making lots of noise on New Years Eve. More recently, hes joined the chorus of ships sounding off on New Years Eve. But after complaints, the police were waiting to muffle Carruthers, who said hell seek the proper permit to restart the show next year.

Why would you have a noise ordinance on New Years Eve?, asked Carruthers, who hikes up a hill on the Washington side of the Columbia River each year and plants a microphone in advance to record the ship horns.

Noisy history

Last New Years Eve, the cops shut me down, said Carruthers, who periodically receives complaints from people around his soundings. He estimates hes been contacted by police four or five times throughout the years. Most recently, police shut him down five minutes after starting Jan. 1, 2013.

For the Millennium, he traveled to Las Vegas, intending to lend his powerful voice to the celebrations. But the police caught him parked in a rail yard and warned him against sounding off.

I kind of ignored him and said, To hell with it, said Carruthers, who recorded the event from 3 to 4 miles away. What my recorder picked up was an all-out war. There were people all around the city firing off live rounds.

The year after, Carruthers traveled to Vancouver, British Columbia, where he drove around Stanley Park sounding off, recording the ships in the harbor doing the same with a microphone placed on a nearby hillside.

How it began

My main interest has always more or less centered around sound, said Carruthers, who records many of his blasts.

He started collecting the bells out of ships from local salvage yard in high school, upgrading to horns in the 1960s, starting with a tug boat horn and in 1965 his first locomotive horn.

The first horn I had is a locomotive horn, he said. It had more of a penetrating tone. Its much louder than a truck air horn. I had that on my Volkswagen Beetle.

The horn was inside on the vehicle pointed out. It was about 140 decibels.

By the mid-1980s, he started into ship horns. It was 1989 that Carruthers built his first tuned horn system, Decibel No. 1, consisting of two small rail horns and one large Kockums ship horn. He added another Kockums horn in 1990, starting Decibel No. 2, until he outgrew his truck.

The whole system … probably weighs about 1,400 pounds, three quarters of a ton, he said. Most of the weight is in those tanks.

So Carruthers bought a new Dodge Ram in 2004 to accommodate the horns. He estimates upward $60,000 spent on the truck and up to $15,000 on the horn system.

In addition to his horn, Carruthers made an aluminum gong to sound off after touchdowns at John Warren Field. He said he likes to think he played a small part when Astoria football went to the state championship in 2008.

For now, hes content with his current horns, but he still has larger aspirations.

My original idea is to get a really big ship horn like they had on the Queen Mary, but I dont know how youd get the tanks to sound it off.