I don’t think you can speed up halide aging, running them on bigger gear just makes them cycle or possibly rupture earlier? 😬
I do know 24/7 running of halide lamps is not advised, but I’m not quite sure why 🤔

I had a total of five 2x F40T12 fixtures in my house. Two of them (above my workbench) have already been converted to LED. At this point we are just using up the tubes we have left and then gradually converting to LED. Well another fixture lost a tube yesterday, but we don't have any more fluorescent tubes or LED tubes right now. So I pulled off something a little sketchy.

The fixture has a 2x 40W Advance ballast (not the residential type), and importantly it is thermally protected. I removed one set of sockets so the fixture can only accept one lamp at a time, and I connected the red pair of wires to one socket and the blue pair of wires to the other, and capped off the yellow wires. This way there will be one lamp connected across where normally there would be two in series. Now this on its own was not enough to instant start a lamp, so I tried something even more sketchy.

I hooked up a 100W metal halide semiparallel ignitor to it. Connecting X2 and LAMP to the red pair of wires and the COM wire to one of the blue wires (or the other way around) makes it work pretty much like it normally would with an MH ballast. This worked beautifully! I was able to insert a lamp with a broken cathode, and it started up like new! And of course it was a little brighter than usual since the lamp is being overdriven. I have quite a few "dead" lamps, and I will be finishing them off in this fixture. Since the running voltage of an F40T12 is pretty much the same as a 100W MH lamp, the ignitor triggers only until the lamp lights and then it stops.

Does this risk damage to the ballast? I know it isn't rated for the HV pulses from the ignitor, and I know it isn't rated for the current of running one lamp where there would normally be two. Is this a horrible idea? I ran it pretty much all day yesterday, and the ballast didn't seem to get any hotter than usual.

I know The Island of Hawaii has heaps of unusual (compared to the rest of the US) amber LEDs, replacing SOX.

As some of you know my long absence has been partly due to me being at infantry training for the Army. My next assignment is going to be Oahu Hawaii starting on 1/1 for my 3 years. I was wondering if there’s any LG members in the area who I could possibly meet up with if the time works out? I can see the area is majority GE LED fixtures with next to no HPS/LPS but maybe they’ll be some hidden gems.

Don’t you all worry though I am doing great, I still continue to take pics of lights just haven’t gotten around to posting them all.
I do plan to be active once again regularly now that I don’t get my phone one day a week if I’m lucky.

Maybe yeah! Would they cost a lot to ship?

I can get you a couple over the next few weeks or so.  They would be LU50 MED base HPS If that helps? 

Tonight I changed out about 20 or so EoL or near EoL F32T8s.  Most were GEs from 2018-2023 that with no surprise, did not last very long.  Had a few older Sylvanias (2001-2010 ish vintage and a few Philips from 2018-2024 vintage as well.  (Changed out a few Sylvanias at another building that didn't make it 5 years as well.  Stupid transition over to Chinese manufacturing The newer ones were all the 900 series.  The old ones were the 700/800 series. 

I know this is a weird question, but if anyone has any cycling Hps lamps of any wattage, or any mercury vapor lamps having a hard time starting, just anything that is burning out or cycling. I like the look of the colors and arc tube when they are tired, I will pay shipping!

Whatever Feit Electric is doing sounds like something they’d do. They’re like the Yum! Brands of lighting.

Yeah, I thought that was odd too, swing fluorescents sold under Cree brand, I kept looking to make sure they were actually fluorescent and not LED retrofits!

I didn’t see any Feit HIDs here. Also, MV is still not being stocked.

I did take a picture of the shelf showing everything, which I can upload.