I just had a chance to play with some nice old Osram's T5 HE's and HO's, original German and Italian. I used my spectrometer to capture spectra from cold lamps (mercury not yet fully evaporated) to get the idea of what buffer gas fill is. Based on near-IR signature I see, a dense cluster of IR lines, I can say the fill is pure Ar, no Xe or Kr added. About the same that I see for small T5's and CFLs too. I remember reading somewhere too that the fill gas for T5 tubes is just plain argon. Note that some lightweight inert gas with high ionization potential as Ne or He may slip in unnoticed by this method, as it is not preferentially excited in the mix, but I did not see Ne pattern even around cathodes, where it can show up.

I don't have access to any newer 'economy' T5 tubes, so can not tell for them.

See, old school T5 13W runs at the same current as modern T5 HE 14W (170 milliamps), is about the same size and is almost mutually electrically compatible.

 

Update: found one for 2013:

https://images.100y.com.tw/pdf_file/21-HITACHI-FPL-FDL-FML.pdf

I am also aware of some high pressure sodium retrofit lamps using filament heated bimetallic starters for running on mercury vapor ballasts.

@suzukir122:
Yep, I've heard you can actually even ruin your engine in some cases with it.

Those storms really are something more for desert/semi-desert climates. Can & do get them here in CO, much more so on the eastern plains  than in or near the city or close to the mountains where I am (here its just a low-end thing, you're fine driving & such as it doesn't result in real-low visibility)...
but I can say, the the next time I see a a big brown 'cloud' heading towards me & I go out to watch it approach/get pictures...I'll be putting on a mask. .lol.

It was 70's here yesterday, then a good drop in temp to below freezing when the coldfront came through last night (the snow-squall I mentioned passed through along with the front) Its too early in the year to get severe here. (I did see the SPC outlooks for eastern parts of the country today...yep there's gonna be some storms, and tornadoes. Could be some bad ones. not good to see)
Forecast shows a high of 32 for metoday...deff allt colder than the 70's we've had the past few days

Oh ok! Well that is very interesting!

Polam Gostynin OUS 400 to Elgo Adeco.

Adecos' are pretty much non existant in Poland tbf.

Nope. Let me explain.

The manufacture in 1958 first started of as A-24 Zakłady Sprzętu Instalacyjnego in Gostynin. They made electric installation equiments at the time, like connectors, sockets, and other stuff in the type. At 1961, they started to make ballasts for HPMV, fluorescent, and other discharge bulbs, instead of the electrical equipments. At 1963, they chnaged their manufacture's name to Elgo Gostynin, and continued making the ballasts I believe. In 1972, they incorporated with another manufacture named Polam I believe. By 1978, their manufacture name was changed again, and renamed to Polam Gostynin (reasonable to the manufacture they incorporated with), and designed the first HPS streetlight in Poland, the OUS 400. From that time they started to make streetlights. From 1985, their streetlights were started to be stamped by a new logo, called Polamp. However, as of, the manufacture's name stayed the same. And in the same year, they made the last fixture before in 1990, their manufacture NAME was again renamed to Elgo Lighting. After the rename, they still continued the OUS / OUR 400 fixtures. At the time when the name was Elgo, they made many fixtures, such as the XXXd series in 1992, XXXa series in 1995, XXXe and XXXc series in 1997, and the Acron series in 2008, and many other. At the early 2010s, they started to make LED fixtures of different kinds, some flat, some in HPS shape, and even some in SOX shape like I mentioned. At early 2010s, some HPS fixtures were still made and some were new. In 2016, the manufacture I believe bankrupted and had to close down forever and ever...

And that's the story.

would love to see autoroute lighting like the old powerlite florescent fittings long and skinny reaching well over the main traffic lanes and not beaming from the side like current cobra head / high mast pizza box shaped units do

I agree

As I'm talking about the polish manufactures, I think Elgo Lighting was the only Polish manufacture that designed LED fixtures in SOX and HPS shapes (a few were flat). The Adeco pretty much looked like the Modus LV fixtures, but had a flat glass. Pretty much used LED tubes instead of diodes.

The Astra and the Acron 100 LED fixtures were basically in the design of HPS design. Astra had flat glass, the Acron 100 LED had a shallow bowl.

Take in mind these all fixtures were made in the early 2010s, or before 2016, as in 2016 the whole manufacture shut down unfortunately...

Interesting! I thought Elgo became Lena?

Yeah that's something I didn't really think about... that amount of dust in the air probably will do significant engine damage, if you let
the engine continue to run during that, or if you're driving in it, worse case scenario.
This makes me so glad that Ohio doesn't encounter dirt storms... but if that is ever a threat, I'm staying home and calling off from work if need be.
... Things are about to get a little crazy here... 72 degrees for today... severe storm threat set for around 2am here, then snow showers with possible
snow accumulations on Monday. Drastic drop in temperature expected after those storms roll through tonight, along a very strong cold front.
2am time frame for severe weather though is very dangerous. Thankfully we aren't in the highest threat for severe weather, but we are still in the yellow.
Southern Indiana is in the higher threat.

@Eleco_SR304 that does actually look like quite a nice lantern!