bulbs

[jlangevin]

Someone help me out here - it's been a dozen years since I last experimented with flashbulbs and, in spite of the frustrating lack of reliability, something has possessed me to give them another try. I bought a Honeywell Tilt-A-Mite on eBay that looks like it's unused (might help with reliability) but I don't remember which bulb fits it. Is it the M3?

[Bob Thrun]

The Tilt-A-Mite can take three sizes of flashbulbs: AG-1 and AG-3, M2 and M3, and 5 and 25. The battery for it was still being made 4 or 5 years ago. If you can't get the right battery, you can put a common lithium battery into the capacitor compartment after stretching the contacts. I think the battery is a C123. You might have a reliability problem with a corrosion and dirt buildup on all the sliding contacts.

[jlangevin]

Thanks, Bob. The guy who sold it to me put new batteries in it so I guess they're still around.

[Todd]

There was a post on here a while back that listed the right model number battery for the tilt-a-mites as well as a suitable replacement capacitor for the original one. I was able to order both from Radioshack maybe two years ago.
I haven't had many reliability problems with the tilt-a-mites and bulbs... Sometimes I get a bad bulb, but they almost always fire. I do have a 3 D-cell Graflex gun to fire the bigger bulbs that can be temperamental, but I think that one got dunked once and probably needs a new firing button.
The biggest problem I've had with tilt-a-mites is people mistaking the big red "test" button for the "fire" button, or not pushing down hard enough on the real fire button. (My slaves trigger by accident all the time, so I never slave my bulbs.)
-Todd