Hey guys. As you know, I have a 50W HPS Cooper OVC and i run an ED23.5 GE 50W HPS non-eco-lux lamp in it. The thing worked fine when i got it but i noticed recently that the lamp was flickering (it actually looked like fire since it's orange and flickers lol). The lamp startsn up fine then after it's warmed up the igniter starts pulsing continuously and the lamp starts flickering. If you hot restrike it, it'll hot restrike like normal, with the ignitor pulsing as it should. However, the igniter doesn't stop pulsing after the lamp starts again.
Note that the igniter pulses to start the lamp on a cold start then stops pulsing once the lamp starts on a COLD start. Then once the lamp is up to full brightness or shortly after/before, the igniter goes back to work and starts pulsing again. I'm THINKING it's the igniter. I can hear a little "click. click click click. click click. click click cl-click" sound and the lamp blinks to the beat of the clicking.
I don't have another lamp to test on the fixture so i don't know if it as something to do with the lamp. what i DO know is, is that the lamp is getting very blackened on the ends. The lamp came with the fixture and had very little blackening (but it loked used) but recently the lamp has blackened a LOT and I'm a little concerned. For one, i don't want the fixture to be a lamp eater and Two, I don't want the lamp to be an igniter eater.
Any ideas?
