I got one at Lowes last night and put it in my single lamp rapid start fixture and it did start. I HAD the 50's GE "Standard Cool White" in there. It, when new would not light in it, but I had put it in the lag side of my 2 lamp RS fixture with a T12 in the other side and it lit. So as it amassed a good many hours it would light. I a going to see how this works out. I could NEVER get any of my "NEW" F30T8 Duro Test Optima 50s to light on this unit. I rigged a way where I could I used some very thin speaker wire ( the ones with one wire in each wire) and hooked it up to one side, and gave it a boost with a 12 volt Gel battery. That's cheating. 

The GE lamp was made in Hungary. I will report back on what transpires...whatever year that is......


Addition:  When should I see any aging on the ends ?

Update. I went to my local ACE hardware and  they had new F30T8 lamps from Indonesia. BOO HISS. Horrible quality. The one I put installed in January, Hungary made looks like I put it in yesterday. I took BOTH of them and put it in my dual 30 watt high power factor fixture in my radio building and to my amazement they lit. It was quite a bit slow, and a very interesting fade up. Now the test will really tell me something.

Yup, the reason you see these indonesia lamps is because the Hungarian GE fluorescent plant is gone, closed last year.

That is not bad.  That is very, VERY bad.   The 15 watt Indonesian 15 watt K&B lamp  recently got  is VERY poor quality !!   

Update....the Hungarian bulb has substantial brown on one end, and it has done a few thoussand hours more than the Indonesian lamp which has a light tan spot and nice strong end banding on one end. 

They would do that sometimes back when they were named Tungsram

And it is indeed very bad with the Tungsram (GE) factory, they were the last good lamps i seen here