1500w Musco metal halide lamp at full power on a new to me ballast.

[@jonholt495]

I remember when I was in high school before everything got converted to LED, there were 10-20 (possibly more) of these on each pole around the football field, 4 poles in total. As a marching band geek, I performed during many Friday night halftime shows under these lights. Even after the sun had set, it still felt like daytime! Then after the game ended and everyone left they’d turn the lights off and sometimes I’d sit and watch them glow after being turned off, gradually “fading out”, imagining how hot those arc tubes must be at several thousand degrees! Good times, and yes the new LEDs are just as bright (and more efficient), but you don’t get that nice afterglow effect like with the MHs. And they come on instantly, unlike these which took 5+ minutes to reach full brightness 😂 (which I also thought was cool to watch) My alma mater’s baseball field still has MHs and the last time I was there, the lights were on and I could hear them buzzing from a half mile away! My guess is a bad (or even just loose) ballast. No burned out lamps though. Hopefully they don’t get replaced anytime soon!

[@That_2_guy2T]

Nice

[@sethbower11]

Awesome!

[@Sparky-ww5re]

Wow. That is insane. I'm curious what temperature it runs at. ? I have a 400 watt mercury vapor blacklight blue bulb that I run in my 400 SouthWire Hang-A-Light pulse start metal halide fixture, in the polebarn on Halloween week for the Haunted house setup, and it seemed quite a bit hotter than a 400W metal halide, so one day I measured it with a laser thermometer and I was averaging 620°F.

[@BROKEN.WRENCH.GARAGE]

Is that one of the cheapo ebay ones? I have one too I got for like 16 bucks on ebay. And yeah they get way hotter than mh lamps because that dark woods glass traps heat in

[@Sparky-ww5re]

@@BROKEN.WRENCH.GARAGE I don't know that my 400W MV blacklight is a cheapo per se, it's says American DJ and I paid $46 off Amazon. It does however have an E40 base, BT39 shape. Which leads me to believe that it was really designed to run off a European or similar ballast used in 220 -240V 50Hz countries. On the flipside, it was described as a replacement lamp for the UV cannon, popular (or used to be) at large nightclubs and what have you. I would imagine these were most popular from the late 1980s - mid 1990s with the rise of electronic music, notably when Eurodance and House music marked the peak of the rave scene and nightclubs in major US cities across the US and abroad. Regardless, all I had to do to my Hang-A-Light was replace the EX-39 socket with E39, and disconnect the ignitor and the M155 ballast seems to have no issue with running the MV blacklight. The first MV blacklight I ordered, I used it with the ignitor, and during hot restrike time it struck an arc between the leads in the glass stem near the base, melting it and destroying the lamp. This is something to keep in mind if using a pulse start MH ballast to operate a probe start MH or MV.

[@loudspeakertestsmorebyaida3804]

Black light bulbs get hotter than standard bulbs, even if it’s an HID bulb. My 75-watt Philips got up to 490 degrees Fahrenheit with the base up compared to a regular soft white coated 75-watt bulb, which got up to 320 degrees Fahrenheit with the base up. In horizontal position, light bulbs will get even hotter.

[@loudspeakertestsmorebyaida3804]

How hot does this get? My 400 watt bulb is about 390 degrees Fahrenheit in vertical position.

[@BROKEN.WRENCH.GARAGE]

Haven't really measured it but the UV coming off of it feels hot about a foot away

[@loudspeakertestsmorebyaida3804]

@@BROKEN.WRENCH.GARAGE That’s pretty hot. My 500-watt halogen flood light is even hotter. I can feel the heat a few feet away. It measures close to 700 degrees Fahrenheit on the glass cover. It’s not even the bulb. Those things get scary hot. Metal halide is very hot on the outside, but not as near as bad as halogen for whatever reason. Of course, the halogen light is a lot smaller. I bet the 1,500 watt metal halide bulb is at least 600 degrees Fahrenheit on average. Even the back of my halogen flood light gets so hot that I can barely touch it. It will definitely burn curtains and other combustible easily.