The Lamp Room

Last Tues, so hopefully they'll soon arrive. Seller might not have marked them as 'sent' as loads of ppl seem to forget! Assuming those turn up, I'm going to convert something else to run them and get them in nightly use somewhere. maybe a Philpis MA90?

Only 6 days. I'd start to worry after tue or wed. I'd dread them turning up incase they get broke

Yep ma90 2ft 40w twin sounds good to me

Got a nice BLI 80w ballast here that'll do nicely! Still not managed to find a ballast for a single 2' 40w lamp tho

Yer they're pretty damn hard to come by!

You're telling me!

I so regret getting rid of my 2ft 40w quickstart ballast when I was in my 20s. Your 20s are a dangerous age as any kind of collector, I've known a few people who have thought they have moved onto cooler things, only to regret it later!

Ah, we've all been there! I dumped a load of stuff I'd collected during my teenage years only to regret it later on. Managed to re-collect most of it now, but a couple of bits I had back then are being elusive!

Quick question regarding running them in series on 80w gear. Does the gear have to be proper old school 80w fluorescent as most wont fit in modern fittings. Also what starters do people use running them in series. I have gear for single 2ft 40w tubes just never tried a pair in series.

Ein Hashofet used to make 80W MBF (rated for MBF, not FL) choke in the form and size identical to an older 58W FL choke. So such things def existed

You can go with 2x 18W chokes in parallel for the 40W tube, or 2x 36W chokes in parallel for 2x 40W tubes in series

Also - If 80W 5' tubes were ok with running at 65W (not getting into cold cathode troubles, so most likely having longer life than on 80W gear), could this be ok to run 2x 40W on 58W gear ?

I guess it'd be easy enough to set up a pair of 2' 40w tubes on a 65w ballast and see how they do.... FS-2 or the electronic equivalent starters work just fine on a pair of 2' 40w in series.