CFL ballast circuits/neon tubes

[sparks650]

I have a question for all of you electronics guys .
I make neon tubes. In cold weather, tubes filled with argon/mercury vapor are dim due to the mercury not being able to vaporize, think of a fluorescent lamp in a cold room.
One way to combat this is to use a 75 % neon/ 25% argon gas mix. Another is to use transformers operating at 60 mA.
I recently replaced a light bulb in an outdoor fixture with a compact fluorescent lamp.
On a night with the temperature around 5 degrees, I noticed how bright the CFL was.
On the base of the CFL, it's printed that it operates at 190mA.
There are electronic transformers out there for neon tubes but nothing that will get a tube as bright as that CFL is.
How hard, expensive etc. would it be to make an electronic circuit board to light neon tubes this bright?

Here's a pic of the inside of the ballast built into the base of a CFL.
Thanks.
P.S. I know nothing about electronics.

 

[Resqueline]

CFL's are inherently brighter and more efficient than neon tubes. Neons also run at much higher voltages than CFL's (which runs on around 160-190mA and 70-40V).
A compact ballast like that is made by rectifying the mains and then chopping up this HV DC at a high frequency (toroid + transistors) and then feeding this HF to the lamp through a suitably sized ballast coil (Vogt 3.5mH).
The challenge with doing something along the same lines for a neon tube would be stepping up the voltage high enough.
Backlight drivers for LCD monitors and TV's have a high voltage rating but I don't know if they'd go quite high enough and be powerful enough to supply the needed current at the same time.

 

[(*steve*)]

Having read the information on the board in my monitor, it tells me that it can supply 7, 7.5, or 8 mA to each of the 4 CCFL tubes. A total of 32 mA for a 19 inch monitor.

I would imagine the driver board for a large LCD TV would be somewhat "meatier"

 

[Sid723]

Does anyone know what the typical operating characteristics of a standard (say 15 inch) neon tube would be? Voltage, current?

I was an Electronic Engineering Technician at one time working on designs of different Electronic ballasts for fluorescent lamps. The key is to generate enough voltage to initially get the neon gas to conduct (much harder in cold temperatures). Then the ballast must supply the necessary operating voltage and current to operate the lamp.

 

[Mitchekj]

In my experience Neon typically takes ~1.5kV or so. Low current. 20-50mA? I may be making that up, but sounds about right.