The Way to Replace the Fluorescent Starter in A Windhager Bug Zapper

Fourmilab is surrounded on three sides by farmland. In the summer, bugs are everywhere. Faced with this situation, defence in depth is the one choice: window screens, bats, Odonata on the pond, fly strips on the home windows and swatters in every room, and as the final level of terminal defence, high voltage bug zappers with ultraviolet fluorescent lures. These are usually not elegant units, but they get the job done. The principle could not be simpler-flying insects, whose compound eyes see long-wave ultraviolet mild that mammalian eyes do not, are attracted by the lure tube, which seems to emit a dim blue mild to humans. To succeed in the sunshine, they should fly between wires electrified with between four and eight kilovolts which, when the insect completes the circuit, kill-a-bug. The only downside (at least if you are not a flying insect) is that they don't seem to last very lengthy. After just a little more than one summer, the bulb either starts to flash on and off like a strobe mild or just refuses to mild in any respect.

Replacement bulbs are readily available and easy to put in, but in my experience, a minimum of half the time changing the bulb would not fix the problem. With no light to draw the insects, a zapper is useless, so even though its excessive voltage subsystem continues to work perfectly, most individuals junk it when changing the bulb would not make it gentle up. I'm manner too cheap to be pleased with such a state of affairs, Zap Zone Defender so I decided to open up a failed bug zapper and see what was happening. The supply of the issue proved to be as simple as I anticipated and as simple to remedy, so in the hope of saving someone else the trouble of figuring it out, I've scribbled these notes on how one can repair your own bug zappers. These instructions pertain to bug zappers made by the Windhager company of Salzburg, Austria, who've a dominant market share on this obscure trade right here in Central Europe.

Obviously, in case you have a bug zapper made by one other company, it is going to look completely different inside and will conceivably use a wholly totally different circuit for the fluorescent lamp. Unless you perceive what you are doing and know enough electronics to be assured you are not going to do one thing stupid, it is best to go away things nicely sufficient alone and get a new bug zapper. Further, we will be disassembling and modifying a gadget which, when opened up, has exposed connections to probably lethal mains present and extremely unpleasant if not deadly high voltage. If you are sufficiently silly or scatterbrained that you're prone to neglect to tug the mains plug earlier than sticking your hand contained in the guts of a bug zapper, it's best to stop studying immediately and select some safer mission, like making microwave popcorn. To start with, Zap Zone Defender earlier than beginning this process, be sure you strive changing the bulb and see if that fixes the issue.

If it does, you have saved a lot of time and, if not, you are going to wish a substitute bulb eventually, so why not have one available when the time comes? If a new bulb does not do the trick, the problem is sort of actually a failed fluorescent starter inside the field, so we'll must open it up. You probably did remember to unplug the zapper earlier than beginning to disassemble it, did not you? First, take away the bug catcher tray at the bottom of the zapper, taking care to not spill useless bugs all over the floor or your work area. Depending on the model, the two halves of the physique of the bug zapper are fastened along with four or six screws. On "industrial" fashions, these are 2 mm metric machine screws and nuts, but some "consumer" models use infernal "split slot" screws which are meant to maintain you from opening up the device. You see, you're a client, so you're expected to consume-purchase, buy, purchase, not mend issues which break.