I'm guilty of doing that to your name, but now I know the correct way to pronounce it.

Does anybody here have a preference of which country they like to collect their lighting equipment from even if it includes your native country?

For me, even though I live in the USA, Japan is my favorite country to collect lighting equipment from because that country has a wide range of unique lamps and fixtures that cannot be found anywhere else in the world such as the wide range of mercury vapor retrofit lamps that include high pressure sodium, deluxe high pressure sodium, quartz metal halide, colored quartz metal halide, and ceramic metal halide lamps available in a wide range of wattage ratings.

Today I found two 36w tubes on the side of the road, and I decided that they will be my lab rats for homemade grooved tubes. I don't think it is possible to bend the tubes at an angle but I will try it soon.
(I will use my dead tubes fIrst then these working ones)

Meant to post about it yesterday but forgot... installed my final two Metal Halide wallpacks in my garage, making it eight wallpacks total.
Recorded video of them firing up yesterday as well but debating on uploading that video since the cords protruding everywhere near the garage
door opener makes it look a bit messy... still gotta tidy everything up.

Same. Mag reg ballasts fascinate me, but HX ballasts are the best for reliability.

It depends if the lamp is designed with vacuum vs gas (and then exactly which gas) filled outer.
With vacuum (lower power, ceramic,...), it quite makes sense to use there...

My name gets butchered all of the time and I live in the States!

It's pronounced 'Max-eem' whilst most people see the 'i' and immediately assume it pronounces as 'um', so in essence I am always called 'Max-um' instead of the "proper" way. I guess this is in part due to the natural spelling / pronunciation of Maxim in the Russian language being 'Максим', the second-to-last letter being an 'e'. Anyways....

After knowing that most high pressure sodium lamps have barium getters near the base of the lamp, I have noticed that some quartz metal halide lamps such as the GE/Tungsram Kolorarc and some Osram HQI-T lamps have them, but also some ceramic metal halide lamps such as some Philips MasterColor lamps and some Iwasaki Cera Arc lamps have barium getters.

Why were barium getters often added to certain quartz and ceramic metal halide lamps?

My favorite is HX for their reliability. No cap to fail.

Second would be mag reg. Love how beefy they are, and how they run lamps.

Personally, my favorite magnetic HID ballast topology is the HX autotransformer ballast because such ballasts allow for a very wide range of lamps to operate properly.

What magnetic HID ballast topology is everyone else’s favorites?

CWA, CWI, series choke, HX autotransformer, 2 lamp lead-lag, mag-reg, etc?