Nice to see one lit

very cool! very cool to see one lit as well, I had theorised for some other people who have the same lamp that asked me what gear to run it on, that a 150W SON choke would work well did you break out the multimeter and measure the current and lamp voltage? im guessing you used a Philips sun tanning starter to start the lamp?

No just a regular 155/800, we don't have any sun bed starters that'd be better suited as the current is a tad high! I'm wondering if two could run in series on a 400w choke? Not that we have a second lamp to try!

You did put an ammeter and voltmeter in the circuit didn't you Tom... I can't remember the readings but we thought it was a bit over but it turned out to be spot on !

Yes from memory we had around 75v going into the tube at around 2a

interesting results 2A is a bit high, however 75V is quite a low arc voltage was the lamp cold or hot when those measurements where taken? and was a it a true RMS Multimeter?, lamp specs are supposed to be 130V 1.5A IIRC, this reminds of the 200W SLI/H situation, (which is funny, because one of these VHO tubes has similar specs to a 200W SLI/H lamp) I have plans to run up my Westinghouse 110W 4ft SHO lamps soon, and now that I have a decent multimeter it will be interesting to see what figures i get!


considering these Diazo blue tubes where used in the UK on a limited basis, it would be very interesting to see what gear they did use here in 50Hz land (in the US they would of run off a normal VHO Rapid start ballast)

A lovely tube. Such a nice treat to own in the UK.