Hi Arfa,

Arfa Daily wrote:
"D Yuniskis" wrote in message
Arfa Daily wrote:
I have now found an internet site selling all varieties of
incandescents, including 60 watt pearl, so I shall be stocking up post

puzzled Can't you (still) purchase these over-the-counter?
I'll admit to not having gone shopping for any recently (as I
have several dozen of various bulb types on the shelf) but
i didn't realize they have (?) disappeared...

In theory, they have this side of the pond. There was EU legislation put
in place - that our government of course felt it necessary to sign up to

Ah, OK.

- which phased out incandescent bulbs with a pearl diffuse envelope. 60
watters were to be the first to go, followed by 100s. Clear envelopes
however, were to remain available, at least for the time being. So all

What was the rationale behind phasing out the 60's before the 100's?
Frosted before clear?

of the supermarkets and sheds stopped selling 60 watt pearl bulbs, ahead
of the 'ban' to make sure that they complied, and were not left with
cartloads of unsellable items on their hands. However, as I understand
it, due to a governmental administrative snafu, the actual legislation
was never enacted in the UK, leaving the way wide open for internet
sellers, to just carry on as they were, and take full advantage of
people's natural tendencies to stock up. I guess that the supermarkets
etc have not restocked to make sure that a) they don't catch a cold if
the situation suddenly changes, and b) they don't look bad that they've
sold out on their eco-bollox credibility ratings.

(which also makes me wonder if lead solder has gone this route)

No, not really. Standard leaded solder has disappeared from all
commercially available electronic equipment, with the exception of
classes of items such as avionics, life support, and military (draw your
own conclusions on this) which have been granted dispensations to
continue to manufacture in leaded technology. This has been the case
since June 2006 when the RoHS directive came into full operation.
However, there is no requirement for equipment manufactured and brought
to market before that date, and perfectly legally constructed using non
RoHS compliant materials, including solder, to be repaired using
anything other than originally specified non-compliant parts and solder.

Ah, OK.

Indeed, it is considered to be not particularly metallurgically good to
mix the two types of technology. There is also no requirement for items
constructed for your personal use, and not to be offered for resale, to
be constructed with lead-free parts and solder. For these reasons,
traditional 60/40 solder is still readily available from all the usual
parts supply houses, and is expected to continue to be for the
foreseeable future.

haste. I have also just started trying out the halogen versions of
traditional light bulbs, which still seem to make it into the
eco-bollox "book of energy savers", even though they only consume a
few watts less than their equivalent light-output 'traditional'
tungsten cousins. Thus

I found the halogens to be a harsh light. Love them outdoors
(can you spell "bright as day"?) but I've removed all of the
indoor bulbs.

Really ? I have found the light to be perfectly pleasant, if perhaps a
little bright. Maybe that is your interpretation of "harsh" ?

shrug *Felt* as if it was shifted towards the blue (violet) end of
the spectrum.

It is interesting to evaluate "light" in A/B tests instead of
"from memory". You can look at two light sources independantly
(separated by a bit of time) and consider them to be a lot
more similar than when you see them "next to each other" (in
time).

Also matters what other light sources are contaminating the area.

far, I am impressed. I now have a 70 watt actual, 100 watt
equivalent, fitted to my hallway main light fixture. It is very
bright, very easy (for me anyway) to see by, and has a good colour
spectrum, not in the slightest way offensive to my eyes, unlike the
CFLs, which no matter how much anyone says that *they* can't tell the
difference with, *I* can ... d :-\

We're waiting for dimmable LED lamps (that won't require growing
extra limbs to purchase)...

Although like CFLs, they do seem to be getting a little better, I've yet
to see any that come close to other lighting technologies. My local
supermarket has a number of floodlight fixtures for the car park, split
between wall and pole mounts. Until a couple of weeks ago, these were
fitted with some kind of metal halide or maybe high pressure sodium
bulb. Whatever they were, they were a pale yellow, and did a grand job
of lighting the car park in all weather conditions. They have now

IIRC, they have special drive requirements. And, suffer from
a slower warm-up time.

We had (some kind of) lamps to illuminate the walkways at school
which could be *shaken* (rather difficult for a 4" metal post
sunk in concrete) "off" -- only to restart some time later.
Mindless game to play when you had nothing more pressing on your
plate. :

replaced the fittings with white LED arrays. I would guess that each one
is probably a 10 x 5 matrix, so 50 LEDs. They are so bright that you
can't look at them so what power rating are they ? 1 watters ? or 3s
maybe ? Whatever, still a pretty significant power draw over 50 of them.
However, bright as they are, the light from them is "harsh" - there's
that word again - cold and shadowy. They don't actually come close to
the performance of the previous floodlights, whatever exact technology
they were. It will be interesting to see how well they penetrate fog, as
we're now into that season. When low pressure sodiums were first
introduced for street lighting, as I recall, fog penetration - which
*is* inescapably good for yellow light - was one of the cited advantages
for the technology. Certainly where you find white (mercury vapour ? egg
shaped bulbs) high intensity street lighting in use, it performs nothing
like as well in fog.

Here, we have ordinances "light polution" so fixtures and
bulb technology tend to be driven by things other than cost,
reliability, etc.

shrug