Replaced some mini bulbs & LEDs in sets of Christmas lights as I was putting them away for the season.

There's a fluorescent fixture on the deck I think the ballast went out in, so at some point gonna have to take that apart & have a look at it.

 I bought 2 more totes for my lamps .

On January 3rd, 2026, I replaced the ballast in my bathroom fluorescent light with a NOS Universal 446-LR-TC-P from 1985. The old ballast was a cheap electronic ballast that came with the fixture. Also put in a new set of warm white lamps while I was at it.

On January 10th, 2026, I installed a Lithonia Lighting single-lamp F20T12 strip light in the garage workshop above the workbench window. I also got some GE fluorescent and high-pressure sodium lamps on sale at Lowe’s.

Nah! I’m into cars too though I have a rather odd taste, as I am only 16, I am too young to drive, so these are my dad’s cars! We have a BMW I3, a Porsche Panamera GT and a Volvo XC90
My taste of cars are slightly different, I like French cars, a Renault 4, I’m all over it, Citroen DS 19, gimme gimme!
Back on topic: I just had some French style snails along side a delicious home made steak taretare! Yum yum yum!

Yeah... I've noticed there are a few lighting collectors on Lighting Gallery who have an interest in motorcycles. (As do I... currently I don't own
a motorcycle, but that is set to change possibly within the next couple of months, after I buy my next daily car. Two of my neighbors are waiting for me
to give them the all clear to travel where my next motorcycle is, to pick it up with me once I'm ready.)
Although I don't have autism, I've noticed that my interest in everything that I've been interested in all of these years, have also increased.
Sport cars, motorcycles, certain trucks, and Lighting. All of that has been on the increase. Especially my interest in Turboed cars, and Lighting...
which by the way, my lighting collection is still on the increase, with the majority of my lighting getting used. (Case in point, the twenty two F30T12's in
my living room, the 6 Metal Halide Wallpacks in my garage... etc.)

I'm also autistic and it can be noticed easily. I was diagnosed very young too, but I don't know the age.
In the past I had a tendency to get very aggressive very easily, but luckily that doesn't happen anymore. Sometimes I still get a little mad at certain (often very minor) things, but it mostly goes away a lot quicker now.
After moving to my own on 2023, things really started to go better. I'm still dependent on my parents with certain things even though I moved to my own couple years ago, but it's alright.

I also keep thinking about things I don't really want to think...


I read something about interests on this topic, so I thought I'd share mine, so here we go...
My interests haven't really changed. Instead, they have increased. Don't call me crazy, I still like Winnie The Pooh and Paw Patrol.
Lighting and electronics have always been my interest. On 2021 I started have a big interest in motorcycles, and now I have a big collection of motorcycle toys. I just can't explain the love towards motorcycles, it's just so big. I also have a small interest in CRT TVs since 2025.
I'm pretty good at making music too. Since 2017 I've been using music making softwares, LMMS in the beginning, now FL Studio. My very first "songs" were completely trash, but now I'm doing better. Nowadays I mostly do remixes, the genre I produce the most is melodic house, sometimes pop and future bass. I don't think it would be a good idea of uploading them anywhere because all the copyright stuff...
I'm also very good at solving basic computer problems that some people can't solve. I often help my teacher with computer things, even at one recruitment event I once helped with computer thing. I really like helping people anyways.


Ok, that might be enough for this post, took me almost hour to write. Tell me what you liked!

The question is in the subject.

I bought some standard Philips 0.75kV two-wire ignitors, and ignored the 3rd wire in the fixtures which is just a neutral going to the terminal block. That works just fine, it seems. Flawless ignition of MH.

I'm not going to use these fixtures everyday, they're just really cool because of their sheer scale. They'll be more of a display piece that I'll power up on occasion. It's not realistic to run these as actual lights at home, while they do output incredible amounts of lumens, the power usage would just be too much. I can run one but definitely not more than that.

They do have working power factor correction capacitors, but the capacitive current at startup trips the inverter. They draw 10 amps or something capacitively before the lamps warm up, it'll never work to power these off of these small inverters. Because these fixtures won't be used regularly, it's easier just to run them from a old-school generator set

I don't understand how they manage to power entire industrial halls with these, they're fused with 16 amps per phase and that's like almost nothing, the fuses should theoretically blow from the apparent power on startup. It's absolutely ridiculous to have these installed in a small factory hall like the place I got these from, fluorescent lights would have been much more energy efficient and provided more than enough illumination, heh. There is 76 of these installed in that hall, so that's a insane power draw. They've all been retrofitted with LED bulbs now, but even those use 165 watts each. And their lumen output is lacking compared to the MH bulbs. It feels like the power usage just for lighting alone, the cost of that, far outweighs what they earn producing their item.........

In the near future, I might consider importing a Japanese low starting current mercury vapor reactor ballast along with a standard Japanese high power factor mercury vapor reactor ballast of the same company and wattage and examine the power factor correction capacitors used inside them to see if the power factor correction capacitors of the low starting current ballasts were appropriately chosen.

Well, European RS ballasts relied on relative low ignition voltage of argon filled T12 tubes to start them directly from 220-230V line voltage as OCV with a simple choke ballast. Sometimes, mild tricks like auto transformer windings on heater transformer or slight resonance around it was used to slightly increase OCV may be some tens of volts, that's all.

Krypton T8 tubes sacrificed low ignition voltage for optimized efficiency, so they just won't start on old RS ballasts en masse. Preheat or resonant electronic ballasts do not care for this.

For American 4ft + ballasts mandatory featuring HX or CWA style autotransformer it is possible to further increase OCV by increasing turns ratio. BUT as we know, raising OCV for low burning voltage lamps results in high material costs and piss poor efficiency, look at that abysmal 18W/35W American LPS HX ballasts, where literally only half of the input power reaches the lamp, what a shame...