Parmar Venture CWA ballast for US 175W Metal halide (and Mercury) Lamps

a recent ebay find that I am very pleased to have found!

its a 240V 50Hz CWA ballast! a 240V 50Hz CWA ballast is something I have wanted and have been looking for, for many years now so I was very pleased to finally find this one :)

CWA ballasts are a type of ballast normally only found in the US and are very rare here in the UK and not easy to find! however Parmar did make them in 175W 250W and 400W Sizes and this is one of them

and as a bonus this is one for 175W lamps, shown here happily running a Westinghouse 175W life Guard mercury lamp :)

so I am also very pleased to have official 240V 50Hz 175W Ballast for my US 175W lamps :) (although a 150W SON choke generally works as a good substitute)

I am also quite excited to try some alternative lamps on this ballast, as being a CWA ballast, its a fairly good constant current source, (ie regardless of what the lamp voltage does it will hold the lamp current steady at 1.5A~, compared to a choke type ballast, where the current will change depending on lamp voltage)

so it may be just the ticket for running some 1.5A rated discharge lamps I have which have been difficult to run otherwise due to their unusual electrical characteristics (ie my 200W HO SLI/H lamp! which refuses to run on any 240V choke of any kind due to its high re-ignition voltage causing it to extinguish after a while)

I have to say I was not expecting just how big and heavy it is, its even bigger and heavier then my 400W MB/MBI choke!

its also constructed rather interestingly, its a transformer Core and Coil construction like a US ballast, but its been painted and has screw terminals with a base plate like a British/European ballast!