Re: humming CFL

Quite a few sold everywhere are like that.

I use Philips Hues which likely are fine but that system is very expensive for just the one led light.

It's $19/2 of them, at Home Depot and Amazon, and Amazon has one for almost $10. Thanks. Expensive but a good idea.

Bob, there's one other bulb in the package. I'll try that

As I said, with the CFL the interference could be lessened by turing the radio off frequency a little**, but with the first LED bulb, I turned the tuning knob a half turn in each direction, from maybe 88 to 92 MHz FM. and the hum was the same everywhere, twice as loud as the sound had been. It's interesting that it interfered with FM reception, which is less vulnerable than AM, but it appeears, not invulnerable.

That's because it was a relatively weak harmonic of the chopping frequency.

That's because the designer was stupid enough to use a chopping frequency that's right in that band.

Yeah, particularly with that powerful a signal.

In the eighties I had an old TV (non cable ready). I found that by setting it to channel 7 and misadjusting the fine tuning, I could get channel 22 (cable midband, frequency just below that of ch. 7).

BTW, you could get ch. 6 sound on an FM radio.

You still can (well, the analog channel 6). This is used, even today, by a bunch of "radio stations" (in quotes 'cuz, see below..) who are technically licensed as low power analog tv channel 6 (which is still allowed) but in reality are using that slot to give them a decent range audio/radio signal at 87.7 FM.

Note that while the official FM (in the US) band starts a bit higher, most - especially those with tuning dials - will let you hear this one, too.

Info on a typical station:

Wow.

Unrelated but you remind me, Our first TV was a Dumont, with magic eye tuning. It had continuous tuning like a radio (both gross? and fine tuning) and the channels 2 to 13 were marked in their approximate location on the dial, 2 where 1 o'clock would be, and 13 where 11 o'clock would be. I think 2, 3, 4, and 5 were grouped together, then a space and 6 and 7, then 8 to 13 in a group. Between 7 and 8 were the FM radio stations, and a swich on the TV would turn off the picture so you could listen to the radio without running the TV. Unfortunately there were no FM stations in New Castle, Pa. or even Pittsburgh in 1953 or

You're right. I put the noisy LED bulb in the ceiling fixture and now it's about 5 feet from the radio and doesn't interfere at all.

It's called "daylight" and at 100 eq. watts it gave a very strange appearance to the room. I'll probably get used to it. They didn't have anohter low-cost LED at HDepot and ... I'll probably get used to it. After all, it's "daylight".

"Daylight" is generally around 5000 - 6500 kelvin. With LED devices, the CR I (Color Rendering Index) for such a (cheap) lamp will be somewhere between 50 and 80, or in other words, pretty wretched. LED lamps with both a high CRI and a high K tend to be costly relative to the cheapies. Strange appear ance, indeed.

Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA

I find the old "dirty yellow" bulbs looking worse and worse now that real white is available.

I did have that reaction initially when I installed the Philips Hue lights right thru my house. Got the dirty yellow starter kit and hated how yellow it was, even tho I mostly used PAR38 floods and spots inside the house before that. So I got the fully color controlled bulbs for the ones after the initial starter kit of 3 bulbs and used the yellow ones in the bedroom, the room where I store all the beer I brew etc.

Don?t really notice the dirty yellow in the bedroom anymore even tho it gets used every day. And I now how quite a few of what Philips call white ambience which can be set to any white you like but not any color you like like the most expensive bulbs can be.

I put up with the "not quite" white that yellows with age CFLs and the not instant on simply because they made my electric bill go way down Now that LEDs are cheap, I buy them at Wal-Mart. Instant on and something close to white again.

Do you notice that some come on instantly and some seem to have about a

I had one strange CFL that actually changed color. It would come on dirty yellow, and a few seconds later turned white.