I have been buying Feit bulbs and fixtures from Costco for some time now and have never found any interference. I like their 4 foot shop lights. I have not tested the color changing bulbs.
David K0LUM > On Nov 26, 2022, at 4:05 PM, Al Lorona <[email protected]> wrote: > > I hope this helps anybody facing the same issue. > > The fluorescent lights in my basement make horrible RFI noise, especially on > 40 m but really affecting all bands. They raise the noise floor by about 16 > dB on 40. I discovered this during Field Day *last* year when I set up in the > back yard. > > They use these electronic ballasts that put out perfect square waves -- > that's the source of the noise. The entire bulb and wiring act as a radiator, > and there's about 8 feet of wiring in each fixture. I did some research on > the web and found a guy with the same lights who had disassembled every one > of his fixtures to install filter capacitors, and I considered following his > procedure but decided it was waaay too much work to undertake, so I've lived > with the problem for a year-and-a-half. > > Anyway, at Menard's the other day I noticed these Feit LED replacements for > the 4-foot fluorescent tubes. These have existed for years now, but these > bulbs were different. They said "ballast bypass" on the box, and upon closer > reading I learned that to use these as replacements you have to re-wire your > fixtures by taking the ballast out of the circuit. (They're also called > "direct wire" bulbs.) The hot and neutral go directly to the bulbs without > anything else in between, just like incandescents used to be. Well, this > intrigued me because I wondered if, with the ballast out of the loop, it > would quiet things down. > > So I bought a few of them-- they're not too costly-- and re-wired one of my 4 > fixtures and with the lights on I noticed that the noise floor had actually > lowered perceptibly (and on the panadapter). I immediately went back to buy > the 14 more bulbs I needed and now I can't even tell that the lights are > on... there's no RF noise! So these LEDs are the answer to the evil > electronic ballasts that I don't know how they got past the FCC. When > purchasing LED bulbs one always risks incurring more noise from the LED > circuitry itself, but I've always had pretty good experience with Feit and > this was no exception. I can't speak for other brands. > > R, > > Al W6LX/4 > > ______________________________________________________________ > Elecraft mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:[email protected] > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html > Message delivered to [email protected] ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to [email protected]
