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CFL's - LEDs - Solar

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daleputnam

CFL's - LEDs - Solar

For those looking at CFLs or LEDs in the shack, and presuming that is where you built, very close attention must be given to
the color and intensity of the light emitter. Especially if you are working with hole through color coded components, like resistors.
The perceived color of the bands/dots may NOT be exactly what was intended, NOR what will be percieved when re-examined under direct sunlight. Direct sunlight is tuff to come by after sundown and prior to dawn, and with the longer hours of winter darkness coming, look hard and long at the different light emitters.

a simple word to the builder, from the... now a bit wiser.

Have a great day,

--... ...--
Dale - WC7S in Wy

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Phil Kane-2

Re: CFL's - LEDs - Solar

On 9/27/2015 11:51 AM, Dale Putnam wrote:

> For those looking at CFLs or LEDs in the shack, and presuming that is
> where you built, very close attention must be given to the color and
> intensity of the light emitter.

I took a page from my wife's avocation -- art -- and use
daylight-color-corrected lamps for everything but mood lighting., even
for the extension-arm lighted magnifier and hand-held magnifiers that I
use for inspecting radio parts and boards. Prices for those devices
have come down greatly over the last few years.

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane
Elecraft K2/100 s/n 5402

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon
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Matthew Cook

Re: CFL's - LEDs - Solar

In reply to this post by daleputnam

You should find that many of these lamps will have a little known value
written on the side of the box that will help you decide. The ]Colour
Rendering Index (CRI) of these lamps will tell you how faithfully they will
reproduce all colours of the spectrum. If you find a lamp without this
information on the side of the box, then be careful and perhaps don't buy
it.

A CRI of greater than 90% (0.9) with a colour temp between 3000-4000 will
be adequate for the shack and reading of resistors and colour codes. It
turns out that brown and deep reds are very difficult colour to faithfully
reproduce from blue rich white light, which isn't a new phenomenon since
long arc fluorescent, CFL and LED all derive white light the same way. For
reference low pressure and high pressure metal halides have a CRI of 100%
which is why you find them used in art museums, ditto tungsten et al.

However pay careful attention to noise from these more modern lamps, the
EMI from some cheap and nasty LED/CFL lamps is just hideous. We all want
to preserve the noise floor for our Elecraft RX's, just to keep this on
topic.

73

Matthew
VK5ZM

On 28 September 2015 at 04:21, Dale Putnam <[hidden email]> wrote:

> For those looking at CFLs or LEDs in the shack, and presuming that is
> where you built, very close attention must be given to
> the color and intensity of the light emitter. Especially if you are
> working with hole through color coded components, like resistors.
> The perceived color of the bands/dots may NOT be exactly what was
> intended, NOR what will be percieved when re-examined under direct
> sunlight. Direct sunlight is tuff to come by after sundown and prior to
> dawn, and with the longer hours of winter darkness coming, look hard and
> long at the different light emitters.
>
> a simple word to the builder, from the... now a bit wiser.
>
> Have a great day,
>
>
> --... ...--
> Dale - WC7S in Wy
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________
> Elecraft mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
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>
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> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
> Message delivered to [hidden email]
>

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Al Gulseth-2

Re: CFL's - LEDs - Solar

On that subject, does anyone know of any tests for which brands of lamps (LED,
I don't use CFLs!) are better for low EMI? As noted it would seem that the
name brand units would be better in this regard, but maybe not?

73, Al

On Sun September 27 2015 6:42:19 pm Matthew Cook wrote:

>
> However pay careful attention to noise from these more modern lamps, the
> EMI from some cheap and nasty LED/CFL lamps is just hideous. We all want
> to preserve the noise floor for our Elecraft RX's, just to keep this on
> topic.
>
> 73
>
> Matthew
> VK5ZM

Phil Hystad-3

Re: CFL's - LEDs - Solar

My house is filled with some cheap LED lights — there are four in the ham shack alone. Never have I had any EMI issues from these lamps. By cheap, I mean the lower cost LED lights from Home Depot. I don’t really go out of my way to get the cheapest things I own — after all, I have a full K-Line and KX3.

73, phil, K7PEH

> On Sep 27, 2015, at 6:05 PM, Al Gulseth <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> On that subject, does anyone know of any tests for which brands of lamps (LED,
> I don't use CFLs!) are better for low EMI? As noted it would seem that the
> name brand units would be better in this regard, but maybe not?
>
> 73, Al
>
> On Sun September 27 2015 6:42:19 pm Matthew Cook wrote:
>>
>> However pay careful attention to noise from these more modern lamps, the
>> EMI from some cheap and nasty LED/CFL lamps is just hideous. We all want
>> to preserve the noise floor for our Elecraft RX's, just to keep this on
>> topic.
>>
>> 73
>>
>> Matthew
>> VK5ZM
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Jim Sheldon

Re: CFL's - LEDs - Solar

In reply to this post by Al Gulseth-2

I bought all my LED's from a number of different sources and they are assorted brands. The only thing i looked for was color temp and they had to be "dimmable". After I swapped all the CFL's and tubes out, my background noise dropped by around a half S unit.

I then killed all the lights in the house and the noise floor stayed the same. To check for sure, I put a rubber duck antenna on my KX3 set it to AM, 6 meters and turned all the lights on. Even with the antenna right on each bulb, I didn't see any significant change in the background noise.

My closest neighbor had all CFL's and I could take the KX3 near his house when he had his lights on. S7 noise on 10 and 6. After he had a CFL catch fire, he bit the bullet and went all LED. Now, as long as the power company keeps the trees out of the lines and the insulators clean, my noise floor runs pretty much right at whatever atmospheric background is.

I don't know what type of LED bulbs my neighbor got but they are quiet.

Jim, W0EB

Sent from my iPad

> On Sep 27, 2015, at 8:59 PM, Phil Hystad <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> My house is filled with some cheap LED lights — there are four in the ham shack alone. Never have I had any EMI issues from these lamps. By cheap, I mean the lower cost LED lights from Home Depot. I don’t really go out of my way to get the cheapest things I own — after all, I have a full K-Line and KX3.
>
> 73, phil, K7PEH
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