Paging the sparkies

Wickes do electronic starters for about £5, they start much better than the
gas tube ones and have built in spike protection.

The landlords electrician fitted a 2D light in the bog with the wrong
ballast in it, it was slow to strike from day 1 and took about an hour to
warm up so it stopped shimmering.

After about a years use I had to switch the light on and go have a cuppa
while I wait for the tube to strike, a Wickes electronic starter got it
going again till I could track down an electronic ballast at a reasonable
price.

For some unknown reason my flat has very spikey mains, I had numerous
equipment failures before I started buying surge suppressor socket strips -
when I fitted the electronic ballast to the bog light I left in the PFC
capacitor and added a:

http://industrial.panasonic.com/www-ctlg/ctlg/qAWA0000_WW.html

 

There are better solutions.
Surge strips actually work, once or twice, but there's (usually) no
indication the MOV(s) usually inside has buggered up or at the end of
its life, so the user happily keeps on using the strip, unaware it's not
much good anymore.

 

If those "better solutions" were readily available on the shelves I'd
probably be buying them.

Maybe the sheer number of anti-surge socket strips I have is holding the
spikes down so they all last - the only ones to fail so far were Maplins,
and they physically fell to bits.

Also whenever I scrap any gear I open it up and if it has an MOV its
salvaged and either grafted into something I know doesn't have one, or put
in the parts drawer until needed.

 

I presume they have modern electronic high-frequency drivers.
I would have thought that WUN wants a traditional starter and ballast
inductor
that makes a circular saw appear to stop so he can check it with a
finger....

 

OK lets all sing along.
I like to MOV it MOV it.
I like to MOV it MOV it.

As mentioned above you can never tell whether they are fubar or not. They
are kind of like airbags. Once you've set it of to see if it works you
need a new one.

 

You can sing Loopy Lou from Andy Pandy as well if you like.

 

Ah. I am but a young whipper snapper and don't know that one. I seem to
remember he had blue and white stripy pyjamas though. I'm getting quite
good at the theme tune from Caillou though.

 

Nor should you, coz it was "Looby Lou" not "Loopy Lou"

And a fucking stupid hat. Even for a 5 year old it was fucked.

 

Looby Loo, UTYF.

 

I lubed up Lou once. Lovely girl. Still think of her fondly.

 

I've done the same - sadly my Lou died earlier this year aged 37, so
the lubing has stopped.

--
Lozzo
Versys 650 Inter-Continental Hyperbolistic Missile , CBR600F-W racebike
in the making, TS250C, RD400F (somewhere)
BMW E46 318iSE (it's a car, not one of those 2-wheeled pieces of shite
they churn out)

 

It's Gremlins.

 

Sounds exactly the same to me.