Philips MA 5C
Lantern acquired in March 2007.
This lantern was installed second-hand by Jeremy in 1988 in order to replace a 'Shovel' floodlight running a 750 Watt tungsten lamp. It was used to light a small lorry-park off the A38 in Barton-under-Needwood, Staffordshire but was removed when CCTV cameras and 250 Watt SON floodlights were installed. Unfortunately, the cut-off bowl of this lantern has suffered at the hands of vandals - in fact, at least four lamps were fitted between mid-late 2006 due to airgun pellets breaking the previous lamps. The replacement floodlighting does not sound as if it has fared much better, so at least we can tell that the vandals were not specifically targeting this lantern!
The method of making this lantern cut-off simply involved redesigning the semi-cut-off bowl. The usual refractor panels have been replaced with solid reflectors and the vast majority of the bowl is finished in a diffused appearance. The bowl also tapers outwards rather than inwards with the semi-cutoff bowl. This lantern is also known as the ELECO GR 151, and is believed to have been made for Philips by ELECO under licence.
The canopy remains the same as the semi-cutoff version. The wider bowl can be seen protruding from the nearest side. A P42 was originally fitted but the SS55 appeared in more recent times.
The unusually-shaped bowl can clearly be seen from this angle.
The underside of the bowl is completely clear, in order to allow a maximum amount of light to go directly downwards.
The bowl is held in place with an aluminium ring - making it quite heavy. The interior of the lantern is clean and the paint finish is in good condition.
The MA 5C was attached to a wall bracket on Friday, 18th May 2018. I decided that, for variety, the lantern would run a 91 Watt SOX-E lamp, as opposed to the usual 135 Watt SOX lamp.
For saying that the means of providing a cut-off distribution to this lantern is very simple, it also works very effectively.
As can be seen by the light distribution on the back wall, the cut-off is surprisingly sharp.
Lamp switch-on video:
Testing with my energy monitoring device revealed the following results.
| Test Voltage (V) | Current being drawn at full power (A) | Measured wattage (W) | Apparent Power (VA) | Frequency (Hz) | Power Factor | True Power (W) | Difference to rated wattage | Percentage Difference |
| 240 | 0.4 | 95 | 96 | 49.8 | 0.99 | 95.04 | 4.04 | 4% |
The requested capacitor was a 380 V 5.2 µF type; however, the closest that I could obtain was a "motor run" type rated at 450 V 5.0 µF, and as can be seen, this seems to work amicably!
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