Quite impressive! BTW, what does that white label on the door mean? Did you replace the photocell too or leave it because it's still good? And Merry Christmas!

The white label is a date label. The photocell is still perfect,it's an Area Lighting Research from 1984, I tweaked the thermal switch to come on a little later many years ago, it hasn't had any drift in all this time. On the longest day of the year it still comes on at 9:59 or 10:00pm lol. Merry Christmas to you too!

10PM! Even on the longest day of the year it's dark by around 9PM here (fully dark by 9:30 but no useful light after 9, just faint skyglow). But we're toward the eastern border of the time zone so the sun is a little earlier. When I went to Collingwood, ON a couple years ago, we were near the western border of the eastern time zone and come to think of it, it didn't get fully dark til around 10ish. But the sun rises later. Here in the summer time the first crack of dawn is like 4:45, with sunrise a little before 5:30am.

16 years??? Wow! That bulb was "alive" for longer than me lol. The longest HPS I have kept track of in terms of lifespan has been 7 years (113 outside of my house was last relamped in August 2010)

@ Mike: Yeah being north of the 49th parallel the summer nights last a little longer,it's fully dark by about 10:30pm, first light in the morning is around 4am.

@ ZarlogH46: This lamp did exceptionally well for dusk to dawn service. The HPS outside your house is lasting pretty good,it'll be interesting to se how long of a lifespan it will have.

The M-250R2 that used to be in front of my house had its original lamp until 2007. It was installed between 1994 and 1996 since it had a blue Fisher Pierce PC (used between 1992 and 1996 here) and was the post-1993 design M-250R2. The original lamp was a GE (pinkish tone) and started off like a clear MV every night. It was relamped with another GE lamp that lasted until 2014 when it began cycling. Was relamped with a Sylvania lamp in 2014 or 2015 and was then replaced by an LED in December 2016. Toward the M-250r2s final weeks, it had some nights it failed to come on (lamp would faintly flash/glow). I'm thinking the ignitor was starting to crap out after 20 years of service. Some nights it would come to life a few hours after sunset, other nights it wouldn't come on at all. If it did start up though, it was on all night.

Got a great lifespan out of that one!

------------------
I love summer, especially June/July when the days are longest & its still light enough to see by after 9pm

Question: Why don't you have a GE refractor on that luminaire?

@ Mike: It could have been the ignitor beginning to fail.
@ xmaslightguy: Yes I sure did get a great lifespan out of that lamp! I agree,I prefer the long summer days and be able to still do stuff outside in the late evening.

@ NiMo: The plastic GE refractors yellow somewhat and I'm not fond of the look of the GE shallow glass refractor on this luminaire. I like the looks of the Holophane refractor with this luminaire.

I agree, the GE glass doesn't look good on the M-250A2s. The Holophane 4252 (above) looks best on the new generation and the square Westy/Cooper lenses look best on the older boxy ones IMO. Any other GE I'd say looks better with the GE glass but the M-250A2 is an oddball light in the fact that it doesn't follow GE's smooth contours and whatnot. The M-250A2 is GE's only boxy cobrahead. Next closest thing is probably the current generation M-400 and M-400A, which isn't even a unique GE design and uses a more squared refractor anyway.

The formed plastic lens also don’t look bad in these fixtures.