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AGH!!!!
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I plugged both lights in after supper so they'd come on at night and I'd snap a pic. The M-250R's Ripley made the usual audible "CLICK" but the M-250A's Ripley didn't make any sound. I didn't think too much of it though, and left it plugged in until I came outside at about 8:30 to snap pics. I noticed the M-250A wasn't lit. Figuring the plug pulled out, I checked the connections and I freaked out once I realized the M-250A had power but wasn't lit.
First I grabbed a night light and plugged it in. The night light worked, as you can see in the pic. It burned out a few minutes after the pic though (it was brighter than normal; it's a 7W lamp but seemed as bright as a 15 or 25W lamp, typical of near-EOL C7s). Anyway, I got confused so I grabbed a shorting cap and swapped the PC out for it, thinking the PC was bad. Still nothing, but I heard the faint hum of the ballast so I knew the fixture had power. So I put the PC back and swapped out the lamp for another one. I though it strange that the lamp would be dead since all my lamps work, but I thought maybe a weld came loose or something.
Well, I was let down again when I put a different lamp in and it still didn't work. So I grabbed my multi-meter and tried the voltage on the outlet. The outlet has 116V. I thought maybe the voltage was too low due to the M-250R running, so I unplugged the M-250R and measured the voltage of the outlet again and it was only one volt higher (117V) so I knew that wasn't the issue, as the OV-10IB worked just fine at presumably the same voltage. Both have reactance ballasts too, so it's not like one has better regulation over the other.
The only thing I can think of is that I wired the light wrong when I installed it, but that doesn't make much sense either because I've wired this light countless times, so many times that I could do it in my sleep. It's very easy. The black wire goes on the far left terminal and white on the far right. The center terminal is only used when wired for 240V.
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Or maybe a bad capacitor?
BTW, those friggin' bees decided to make a home inside the M-250A too. So I evicted them and soaked the M-250A with Hornet killer. I'm hoping that stuff will keep them away (and I hope it doesn't eat away at the paint on the light!).
I've never had such an issue with bees before. Our lazy next door neighbors (the ones with the camper, just on the other side of that fence) don't like to mow their grass so there's a lot of wildflowers growing over there and the bees are all over the place! They've started nesting in the shed too! By July though they'll be cooked out of there since it gets well over 100 in there in the summer. The heat is really on these past few days too. It's been in the mid-80s the past two days and it's supposed to be in the mid-to-upper 80s tomorrow too. Wednesday there's supposed to be a cool-down though to the low-mid 70s.
These bees seem low key in terms of aggressiveness but seem very active with nest building! I've just decides to leave them alone. At least they won't chew the wires or anything like that. And when winter comes I'll scrape out the nest. I just hope they don't make a giant nest in the whole fixture. How big do those paper wasps build their nests? Just keep getting bigger and bigger or do they stop at a certain size?