[GreenKeys] Off Topic: Curly-Q light bulbs

Sun Jun 10 11:12:09 EDT 2018

Hi

All of these bulbs get hot at the base. CFL and LED both have electronics down there. They dump an 
amazing amount of heat from those electronics. LED’s also heatsink the diodes *somewhere*. Usually that
also is into the base. Even a super duper 12W LED turns most of that 6W into heat. 

Toss in the “we design to price” guys and it gets a bit more crazy. Does the 6W LED pull 6W ? Maybe it pulls
24W … the price is right. Wonder where the other 18W are going? …. into the base …. When was the last 
time you checked a light bulb for current draw? Indeed it’s *always* been an interesting topic ….

In terms of who does or does not produce RFI, these guys switch designs more often than I change socks. 
What works this week may be very different next week. Do the “design to price” guys even care about RFI? 
When somebody does test for it, how do they test and what do they test it in? There really are no standards 
other than what they whip up themselves. 

How to deal with it? Buy one and check it yourself. If it works head back to the store and buy an inventory
of the same ones from the same box. It’s not 100% perfect. It’s about as good as you will be able to do. It 
also lets you check the color temperature and see if you can tolerate the light in your home. 

One nasty issue with both LED’s and CFL’s: They depend on phosphors. The stuff they use wears out at 
different rates. They may put out light for 20 years. You probably would not want to *use* that light for 
anything 20 years from now ….. Indeed they also die normal deaths ( = no light at all ) so who knows what 
goes out first. 

Bob

> On Jun 10, 2018, at 10:08 AM, Ralph Irish <w8roi at wowway.com> wrote:
> 
> I installed two 60W equivalent LED bulbs in my Garage Door Opener last year.  In a few seconds, the usefulness of the
> remote opener was gone.  I would go into the garage, hit the wall button to open the door.  I would get into the car and
> start up, buckle up and (try) to close the door with the remote.   NOTHING!   
>  
> I took the remote into the garage, clicking the 'Operate' button every few steps.  It was not until I got the remote less
> than 1 foot from the antenna on the device would respond.
>  
> The attached image shows one of the offending bulbs.  They were purchased from a national chain of stores, with the
> words "Depot" and "Home" in their name.  Note the plastic sleeve between the threaded metal base and the glass
> globe.  THAT part of the device gets very  HOT  after a few minutes of operation.  I'm guessing that there is a lot of
> electronics in there that produce the heat.  The glass bulb is only slightly warm.
>  
> I replaced the two bulbs with older, less light output LED bulbs.  The opener now works from over 100 feet away, as it
> did before the 'event'.   
>  
> I've not done a lot of shopping for LED bulbs, so I don't know if this 'design type' is common or not.  If you can find
> suitable LED bulbs with an 'all glass' bulb, they might not be "RF Generators."  Don't buy in quantities unless you know
> they can be returned, if they cause RF problems.
> 
> Installing this type in your home might make radio operating difficult, if not impossible.  I've done  NO  TESTING  of
> the freq. range of these 'offenders'.  I just know that they disrupt my Garage Door Opener.  It might be just 'narrow
> band' radiation, or it might be wide band and random, depending on what the manufacturer could purchase in large
> quantities for production.  
> 
> Time for the FCC to step in?
> 
> 73,
> 
> Ralph - W8ROI
>  
> -    -    -    -
>  
> <RF Gen.jpg>  
> 
> From: "Steve Garrison" <steve.n4tty at gmail.com>
> To: "Jim Haynes" <jhhaynes at earthlink.net>
> Cc: greenkeys at mailman.qth.net, "tony podrasky" <tony.podrasky at gmail.com>
> Sent: Sunday, June 10, 2018 7:43:37 AM
> Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] Off Topic: Curly-Q light bulbs
> 
> That is a concern!
> 
> Our radio club has a 2 meter repeater on top of Stone Mountain (since 1969) and every year the Park creates a "Christmas Tree" with strands of lights running from near the top to the ground all around the radio tower on the mountain top.  Around 1350 bulbs in the display makes for a quite impress tree for miles.  About 3 years ago they changed to LED bulbs the purchased from Home Depot.
> 
> Wow, did out repeater coverage suffer!  But working with the park we were able to show them proof of the LED issue in regards to RFI.  And we worked out a temporary work around with them for the nearly two months the "Christmas Tree" is lit up (24 hours a day). They even wrote a letter to the FCC explaining the results of our study and how the two of us had worked out a yearly solution.
> 
> And LED street lights were installed in my neighborhood about a year ago (one of the is at the end of my drive way) and I see no difference on the spectrum display of my FlexRadio when the street lights come on.  Sure can't say that about the fluorescent light in the laundry room right outside my ham shack!
> 
> Steve G./N4TTY
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> > On Jun 9, 2018, at 4:28 PM, Jim Haynes <jhhaynes at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > 
> > Any info about RFI generation?  Important to us radio guys.
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