I'm excited to announce that I bought on eBay today a very cool and rather rare ballast - an Advance LQ-106F-TP magnetic rapid start ballast for one F4T5, F6T5, or F8T5 lamp, new in the box. As preheat and electronic ballasts have always served small T5 lamps well in just about every type of use, this ballast fills a very niche market. It was discontinued, along with its two-lamp variant the LQ-206F-TP, in 2008, and few are to be found today. This one was one of only two I've seen on eBay since becoming aware of them a couple of months ago. The one-lamp version seems more rare than the two-lamp version, so I'm really happy I got this.

And you bet your bottom dollar I'm gonna run it through the mill, and make a video while doing so. I'm gonna measure the OCV and cathode voltage, evaluate the startup behavior with various lamps, and evaluate the behavior of near-EOL lamps and lamps with broken cathodes. It shall be fun.  

I bought this as a Christmas present for myself, so I won't see it at all until then.

DaveMan, don93s, xmaslightguy, and Alights all own the two-lamp version. I seem to be the first with the one-lamp. I look forward to getting to play with it next month.