It's weird because sometimes the flashing colors with my QMH lamps seem either pinkish orange or orange. The flashing in the ones at my gym class were orange all the time, and they would flash normally in twos or threes, before fully warming up.
The flashing with my 20w CMH are always pink, never orange... which makes me wonder about my CMH Philips lamp for my Wallpacks.
I've seen that lamp flash before warming up... but the flash from it was purple, and very slight. I have never seen that lamp do any orange flashing yet.

@LightsAreBright27, how did that kid end up cracking the drawing tablet? Also, how did water manage to slip in it? lol

Today I got stuff done, successfully. Replaced my serpentine belt in my sportcar since the old belt was squeaking insanely loud... cleaned the entire
car as well. Before that, I installed my final two Wallpacks for my garage... so I'm now running eight Metal Halides in that garage. Eight!!
So the car wash was very easily done since I could see everything perfectly fine.
I haven't oil changed my car yet... and I may not do that today. I also haven't taken video of start up of my Metal Halides yet, but I will do that at
some point today.

Man... that was such a rare encounter. I knew it was rare back then as well, and I wish I had kept that CFL.

Had a couple of electronic ballasts that went EOL passively, I think I salvaged the wiring and tossed the rest. As for magnetic ballasts, I had a couple that felt a bit sketchy when I ran it but nothing that really failed in a violent way.

I also got a couple of fixtures with failed ballasts that were dead before I got them, those I just tossed the blown ballast and put in a new one.

And finally I have a couple of used HID ballasts where the dry capacitor is losing capacitance. The cores are still good so I'll probably replace the capacitors if I put the ballasts in a fixture.

I had a visibly fried GE 100w HPS mag-reg ballast that I decided to try out for the heck of it and see what it would do, and it made a loud arcing noise with the lights in the house flickering and after about two seconds of it I unplugged it. The lamp never l had in it never lit up. It also welded the cord I had used to the terminal block. I never did see it arc either. The ballast was fried due to a bad capacitor, which had oil all over it, thankfully non-PCB.

 I've never had a ballast blow but I've seen a couple do it . I have had a capacitor release the magic  smoke inside my Norelco 180w SOX streetlight . Also , back in my teen years , I wired a 50w HPS ballast improperly causing the lamp to grenade into schrapnel all over my bed room !!  I wasn't allowed to mess with lights in my room after that one !

If I were you, I would stay away from Twitter and tik-tok since they are addictive media material

It is a good thing that I'm not in the facebook, twitter, and other media platforms there saving for this lighting gallery and Internet Movie Car Database sites.

Remember how random kids ask if your pphone has games at family reunions? Well i was a victm with my drawing tablet. Some kid cracked the front glass so bad, it made a hole where water slipped in and ruined the display. Lesson learned.
(sorry for spelling error, im typing on my pibook with a microscopic keyboard)

Nope. Only DX mercs and coated HPS lamps were clearbanded. C and W and coated MH lamps were cleartopped until the early 1980s or so. The N was fully coated in the late 1970s.

I also have a Sylvania MS400/C/HOR probe start metal halide lamp that is definitely a cleartopper in my collection.

After reading about some collectors attempting to run 700W H35 mercury vapor lamps on 1000W M47 probe start metal halide CWA ballasts by derating the series capacitor value from 24 microfarads down to 18.5 microfarads with relatively good results, I am interested in trying to find an appropriate capacitor value that is appropriate for running the rare 425W H40-17 mercury vapor lamps on 1000W M47 probe start metal halide CWA ballasts.

For reference, the 425W H40-17 mercury vapor lamps have an arc voltage drop of about 265V and an operating current of about 1.7A and is NOT interchangeable with 400W H33 mercury vapor lamps; the 700W H35 mercury vapor lamps have an arc voltage drop of 265V and an operating current of 2.8A; and lastly, the 1000W H36 mercury vapor lamps and 1000W M47 probe start metal halide lamps have an arc voltage drop of 265V and an operating current of 4.0A. So far, my initial guess is a capacitor value somewhere around 10 to 12 microfarads for the 425W H40-17 lamp if I am not mistaken. I am interested in answering this question because I am looking for easy ways to help collectors safely run 425W H40-17 mercury vapor lamps just in case they find any in the future, but they are extremely hard to find as they appear to have only been produced during the 1960s and would like them to make sure that those lamps would run properly.

The source that I used to find the electrical characteristics of the 425W H40-17 mercury vapor lamps can be found on the link below on page 15 of the following document:

https://www.scribd.com/document/394833080/Westinghouse-Mercury-Lamp-Brochure-1961