No worries Mazeteam. It was fantastic to meet the designer of UKASTLE, and to also see your extensive street lighting collection for the first time.
Thursday was quite a road trip for me. Starting and finishing in Colchester, Essex, the first leg of the journey was to A. C. Ford's in Dudley (near Birmingham) to pick up some brackets for myself and Mazeteam, and after popping in to see Brian and have a coffee and chat (I'll soon know my way to his factory without a map!), I went onto Stelmer's in Leeds to deliver him his SLI tube and some bits and pieces from Phosco152. In payment for his SLI, Stelmer had carefully packed me a box of spare bulbs which will easily see my lantern collection through the proposed mercury ban, and also in the box was a spare 55w SOX lamp for my Eleco GR501 and a couple of white Cosmo retrofit lamps for my Revo Horizon. Furthermore, Brian at A. C. Ford had a big box of street lighting goodies, which Stelmer bought and kindly shared out between us.
Having stopped at A. C. Ford's for a little longer than expected, Stelmer and I went straight to Mazeteam's in York as we were running a bit late, and this was to deliver him his SLI tube too, and also his A. C. Ford brackets. In payment for these I bought three of his mercury lanterns (one post-top, one side entry and one top entry, which is rather neat in hindsight!) and all the bulbs and control gear to operate them.
Stelmer also realised that nick217 was on my way back home from his to Colchester, and he had a lantern and three bulbs for him too, so I was able to deliver these to him on the way home. In all, the road trip (Colchester > Dudley > Leeds > York > Leeds > Coventry > Colchester) was around 600 miles long, or one tank of diesel for my Audi!
Returning to topic, I should advise Mazeteam and Stelmer to, if possible, photograph or film their SLI tubes firing the first few times. Both their tubes were fired once for a few seconds by Phosco152 and myself to confirm their lilac start-up colours. But in addition to their lilac start-up colour, these tubes are still brand new unused stock (although a quarter of a century old!), and their fresh electrodes put on a flashing blue light show the first few times the tubes are struck. Here are a few stills extracted from a video I made the second or third time I lit my SLI tube. Not the best quality I'm afraid, so I plan to photograph the tube properly the next time I fire it up...
This screen grab (of the tube in the GEC Z9517) shows the SLI tube's lilac start-up colours.
This screen grab shows the fresh electrodes in the brand new tube flashing a spectacular blue colour on the first few firings. Not quite as spectacular as Mazeteam's bizarre 90w SOX lamp, but still quite a sight to see!