fluorscents

Um, do you mean choke/ballast or are you talking about starters?

Tim

Its all about what happens with an inductance. I'm assume most know about the storage effect of a coil of wire and all that even if they don't know why. Brian

Sorry, starters. I'm not very electro savvy

fred explained :

You are now saying 'starter'. The starter is only needed to start the tube, hence the name. Remove the starter and when power cycled rapidly it might or might not start. From cold, without the starter, chances are it will not start.

Ah! Starters are only used for starting, so it's all as expected.

NT

obviously if refitting the starter causes the tube to stay unlit the starter is faulty. If it causes it to restrike, that's to be expected.

NT

I recently bought a batch of 4-80W starters to go with the two 75W fittings we have in the kitchen.

It seems they are 'marginal' somewhere as they might typically run for maybe a couple of weeks and then cause the lights to flash off (and sometimes then stay off). Replacing starter No1 with No2-6 could cause the light to behave correctly or continue flashing (off and on again).

I have a plug-in voltage monitor in the kitchen and I haven't been able to tie any strange behaviour of the starters with the voltage.

Replacing those starters with electronic or other suitable brand / models has the (new) tubes running correctly again.

Putting one of the 'questionable' starters in a smaller fitting sees it working fine.

Cheers, T i m

Tube voltage is temperature dependant. It's highest when tubes are cold, so this likely depends on the room temperature, being worse when trying to start the lamps when the room is colder. High tube voltage will cause the starters to think the arc hasn't struck yet, and keep retrying.

Pleased to see that a "Competent person" is being used.