I'm going to investigate further, but just to clarify:

1. There is no separate terminal on the switch for the pilot light; that
is hard-wired internally.

2. It's the pilot light (which is an LED, not neon or incandescent) that
glows with varying degrees of brightness: the CF floodlights work just
fine, just as the incandescents did.

There really aren't too many wiring possibilities: The switch has
Neutral (Silver screw), Ground (Green screw), Load/Common (Black screw),
two Travelers (Brass screws). The existing wires were two Black and one
Red, and I made new connections to the Neutral and Ground. About the
only thing I could have done wrong is mixed up the two blacks.

Perce


On 05/13/05 01:16 pm Pop tossed the following ingredients into the
ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

It sounds like you might have done two things:
1, corrected a previously existing wiring error,
and/or
2. cut the power draw by using flourescents, which
might have the affect of letting the pilot get the
power it's supposed to get.

Often those pilot lites operate simply by being placed
right across the switch. Switch off, pilot's on.
Switch on, pilot's off.
For the opposite situation, they're placed across
the load so that switch off, pilot's off; switch on,
pilot's on. If the pilot's not wired across the ENTIRE
load, then it won't be bright.

IF the pilot's a simple small incandescant, then as
little as a ten percent voltage drop will make it
noticeably dimmer and 20% is sometimes enough to stop
it from even getting hot enough to glow.

My idjumacatid guiss anyway.

A few months back I replaced the original 3-way
switches (one in the house, the other in the garage)
for our patio floodlights by 3-way switches with pilot
lights:

http://www.passandseymour.com/produc...ml?c=TM83PLICC

All was well while the original incandescent bulbs
were still in place (except that I was disappointed
in the brightness of the pilot lights). Now, after
replacing the original incandescents by compact
fluorescents, the behavior of the pilot lights has
changed:

Now the switch in the house has become an
"illuminated switch" rather than a "switch with pilot
light." IOW, now instead of the light being off when
the outside lights are off and on when the outside
lights are on, it is on (and much brighter than
before) when the outside lights are off and off when
the outside lights are on.

The one in the garage still behaves as it did before
(i.e., on dimly when the outside lights are on, off
when the outside lights are off) if the switch in the
house is in one position, but when the switch in the
house is in the other position, the light in the
switch in the garage remains off no matter what
position the switch in the garage is in --
even though it still switches the outside lights on
and off.

I cannot even figure out how the switches could be
constructed that would cause either of them to behave
this way.