lucky enough to have an ORIGNAL refractor....I don't have an orginal on either the Unidor or Unistyle...not even a OEM! The Unidor 400 I had did have an orignal though....now passed on to Rych!

Mine

uh oh...we got two gulls in here now?

thx to you jayce i have a big and a small one

Wow this light looks really cool with the squared plastic lens! I wish they used some of these here but they only used the Unistyle 175s and those were pretty scarce even back when they were new...

could you take a pic of one of your M-250A2s or the OVG with this lens? i bet it'd look good in it! I'm guessing this lens is pretty uncommon? All the unidoors I've ever seen pics of have never had a refractor like this one.

Sure, I could take pics of this lens on a M-250A2 and OVG. Most if not all the Unidors around here came with this lens from the factory as they were 150W HPS,unfortunately these are slowly disappearing.

Cool thanks! I'd ask you if you could try to save another one of these but there's no way I'd be able to afford the shipping lol. I see your light is "O K" too...

Sure,I will keep my eyes open for these. Yes this one is O K The guy I got this from years ago used to mark OK on the lights he tested that were working fine.

ahh thanks. realistically though i don't think i'd be able to pay for shipping if you found another, though it should be less than whatever it's going to cost to ship the M-400A2... Maybe you can train a bunch of messenger pigeons to take it since that would be much cheaper.

Hmm, the Unidors here I think all had glass lenses so I don't think I've seen this style of lens in use here. It seems that plastic lenses are hard to find here...even on lower wattage HPS lights.

yeah I think they look odd with their glass lenses lol. glass and plastic was used here but older fixtures with plastic lenses typically have a replacement lens since I don't think the older polycarbonate lenses were treated agaisnt UV as much as newer ones are so they yellowed much faster and worse and probably had to be replaced every service call (which isn't often considering there are some mercs out there with lamp and PCs from the 80s.

For the M-250R1s on my grandparents' street:
Light 10 has a cream/white colored PC and a shallow GE glass lens.
Light 9 has a new PC, new lamp, and new formed plastic lens, as it was dim, dayburning, and had yellowed lens until i reported it about a year ago. the new PC is a dayburner now too but i'm debating if i should report it since even though it has a fresh lamp, i don't know if they'd replace it even if it was just dayburning. sometimes NGrid is weird like that...
Light 8 has a brown Fidher Pierce PC (no notches on the side like a DTL would have) and a round Formed Plastics/GE acrylic lens.
Light 7 has a cream colored Ripley Sunswitch and a clear FP/GE lens in the streetview shot but i'm pretty sure i reported it for being dim and it got fixed so now it has a new lamp and PC...
Light 6 has a brown Fisher Pierce PC and a plastic westinghouse lens.
Light 5 has a medium-gray Fisher Pierce Sun-Tech PC since it was dayburning for years until they fixed it. I think they relamped it too... it has a deep GE glass lens.
Light 4, the one in front of my grandparents' house, has a new FP photocell and a fresh lamp. it has an acrylic FP/GE lens. before i reported it, it had a Ripley PC and a very dim lamp. (i remember it was discolored and the Fisher Pierce PCs never did that so it must've been Ripley)
Light 3 has a replacement FCO glass and a brown PC. I remember it was the brightest light on the street at one point but not it's rather dimmed out. It's also the only light that's not on a GE cantilever arm; this one's on a tapred elliptical arm.
Light 2 had a Ripley PC and a very browned out broken lens for a long time with a very dim lamp but they fixed it a few years back and now it has a dark colored PC and a new FP lens.
Light 1 has a brown PC and a pretty dim lamp. It has a deep glass lens.

for the M-250As on my grandparents' street:
Light 1 has a light colored Ripley PC and a shallow GE glass
Light 2 has a light colored Ripely PC and a shallow GE glass
Light 3 has a medium gray FP/Sun-Tech PC and a clear FP/GE lens
Light 4 has a light colored Ripley PC and a formed plastics lens
Light 5 has a brown PC and either a shallow or deep GE glass lens

so for the M-250R1s, it's tough to say what the original lenses were. I guess some of them had glass lenses, some has acrylic, and others had polycarbonate lenses. They all seem to have originally had Ripley Sunswitch PCs though since it's either one of those or a brown PC or a newer gray PC.

For the M-250As it's pretty obvious that the original lenses were shallow glasses and the original PCs were Ripley Sunswitches. All but two of the 5 M-250As have their original lamps and PCs because I've never bothered to report them. I've reported like 3 or 4 of the M-250R1s though. I think I've gotten all the dim M-250R1s. I'm going to chance it and report one of the M-250As and see if it gets relamped since a full moon can outshine the M-250As. Here's a streetview link to the M-250As. If you "turn around" the streetview you'll see the stretch of road where my grandparents live with the M-250R1s.

Need a big flock of carrier pigeons. or gulls! Yes,could be quite expensive to ship unless it was an empty fixture.

could you picture a hundred or so carrier pigeons attached to a UniDoor flying it across the continent? It would be all over the internet. well seeing what it's going to cost to ship the M-400A2, which is a huge, heavy sonnavagun with a glass lens, a small(er) unidoor with a plastic lens should be much less, probably in the 60 dollar range which is reasonable to me. (though convincing my parents that it's reasonable would be hard lol) if you are ever able to find another unidoor with the plastic lens i'd want the original gear though since I've never seen the inside of the unidoor before so it'd be interesting to see all the internal components. are all of these in your area with the plastic lens 150W HPS?

That would be a sight to see, drones would be circling them to check them out. It's a pretty hefty fixture,most have a plastic lens of either McGraw Edison or Lexalite brands. A few have glass like the other one I have.

ahh yeah I don't want the Candian military or US military gunning down the light... yeah that's be awesome to fidn one of these with the plastic McGraw lens like this one. Interesting how the lens has a hint of yellowing at the bottom but nothing at the top. You'd think the lens would yellow starting at the top. My GE/Formed Plastic lens is the same way but my ITT lens started yellowing from the top down. You're lucky that this lens is mostly still clear. Must be good quality polycarbonate. Are most of the McGraw plastic lenses up there still clear like this one?

yeah i've seen the unidor 150s in Massachusetts with the glass lens and the round lens looks odd on such a boxy light lol.

Most are quite clear,just a hint of yellowing and a little on the dull side with the accumulation of dust and pollutants over the past 30 years.

ahh. here the polycarbonate lenses tend to really yellow badly. of course i've only seen them used in MV and 250W HPS fixtures though so that's why they yellow so badly. I saw a M-250R2 that's not connected to power get a new refractor door when i was little. it's mounted over a closed section of freeway and it is 250W but i don't think it's ever been connected to power. they didn't change the PC, as it still has the baby blue Fisher Pierce photocell so i think they just stuck a new door and lens on. but over the years i guess sunlight alone has made the lens yellow. it's very subtle but when there's snow on the ground you can tell it's a little yellowed. I guess the ozone hole is a little scarier than we think if sunlight along is enough to yellow a poly lens, albeit a tiny amount.

We have a lot of freeways that look "unfinished" and end abruptly so there are usually a few lights at the end that are lighting a gated off section of freeway or even grass. They've been that way since the 60s when the freeway projects were going off like wildfire. What I don't get though, is if the lights have always been disconnected, why were they changed to HPS M-250R2s in the 90s? It would have been nice if they kept those lights MV to preserve a little history...

Eekk yeah scary if the lenses are yellowing and the fixture never been lit. Most polycarb and acrylic lenses here are in pretty good shape as they are never used in fixtures over 150W HPS . All the mercury streetlights before the change-out 21 years ago were always glass. Hmm interesting they just abruptly ended some portions of the freeways there and bothered to change disconnected lights.

yeah i don't know if the east coast salty air might have something to do with it though. I'm thinking we get some hotter weather in the summer here than you would in the Pacific Northwest so maybe heat plays a roll in it. The lens could have been very slightly yellowed when they installed it too, I never thought of that until now...

Either way, those McGraw lenses are pretty well made if they've resisted yellowing for 25+ years.

Oh yeah for sure,the McGraws are pretty well made,even a good number of the Lexalite lenses are approaching 25 years of use around here.Hard to say if coastal environments may play a role,they seem about the same here close to the Pacific,it gets pretty hot here too, especially inland., I do notice some lenses do yellow more than others over time. Not sure if you guys have it in stores on the East Coast, but I find that a good shot of Spray Nine cleaner will remove some of the yellowing on the surface. When spraying it on the inside of some of the lenses the liquid that collects in the bottom becomes brown.