Has anyone ever seen a Sylvania Omnikat in the wild? Does anyone have one? I'm getting a brand new one soon and was trying to find images of it here to see if anyone has one or has seen one, but unfortunately, I could not find any.

Hi there,

The City that I live in had (If I remember correctly), 88 150w MH Thorn Lemnis installed inthe city centre between 2004-2007, lighting the footpaths. They were fitted with locally made gear (Australian).

I managed to save one (along with it's bracket) in 2024. You can see photos of mine here https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=7956&pos=85&pid=254588 and here https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=7956&pos=86&pid=254587


Here is a streetview link: https://maps.app.goo.gl/6eAq5TtCrTPW59gA9?g_st=ac

Ugh! Your questions worth a rather thick book on MH technique )

Some quick thoughts:

Alumina arc tubes in ceramic MH lamps are less reactive to the filling salts and allow for higher temperatures and pressures. So classic fills like Dy + Tl + Na just work better (due to spectral line widening) but also CMH allows for some unique new metals. Probably the most significant is calcium, which under CMH conditions radiates a few  wide bands in deep red, allowing for creation of CRI 90+ 3000K lamps, finally with a good R9 rating, which usually suffered in other MH lamps, due to inevitable emphasis of Na radiation on orange.

Probe disconnect by a normally closed switch is just mechanically more cumbersome than a simple normally open U-shaped bimetallic strip placed between cathode and probe leads. Look here https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-229314 and here https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-229361

Probe ballast resistor is a relatively high value, somewhere around of 10 kiloohms, so actual power losses are not especially significant.
Anyway, probe start lamps were a long time obsolete tech many years ago already. All high performance designs are pulse start.

@joseph_125, yep, they're closed. I probably would've gone for ANOTHER cheat day...  ... had they been open. You should definitely give the spicy
chicken sandwich (no pickle, add pepper jack cheese and bacon) a try. That's my favorite to get. Same with their strips with BBQ, and their s'mores milkshake.
However, I did decide to break budget a slight bit... I bought a small pizza from Romeo's Pizza. (First time ever trying them.) That was an easy, low
9 out of 10. Very delicious pizza, with slightly sweet sauce. That taste almost reminded me of Sbarros Pizza, which got the rare 10 out of 10 from me when
I was a kid. Not quite as good as Sbarros, but still legendary!
@wide-lite 1000,  ... believe it or not, that's one of the best times to go to Chic-Fil-A lol... tons and tons of people usually forces them to drop down
fresh food. lol

 Chik-Fil-A is good BUT , the one by me is always MOBBED !!! Traffic is usually out to the street so I just avoid it .

 The coated version would be nice in 4,000k .

I’ve seen both clear and coated bulbs used indoors.

They were less common than the clear ones, but they were still fairly common, especially indoors if the lamp was visible, such as high bay fixtures.

I know they are rarely used in outdoor fixtures like shoeboxes, post tops, flood lights, or cobra heads, but were they common indoors? Like in mall recessed cans, low bays, and high bays? Or did those mainly use the clear lamps too.

Because, I’ve seen both in the past, but were coated MH lamps ever common? I know coated HPS lamps are extremely rare, but what about coated metal halide.

they are canadian made and MB Hydro doesn't use them very much at all with the minis being used as laneway lighting for the initial install now GE ERL for new installs / replacement
alberta and BC used lots of the nXt as one should