Week #2: Stoves

Gear, gear, gear… Half of my posts seem to be about camping gear. There’s been mention of boots, a brief discussion on GPSs, some talk of Satellite Phones… It’s time for a change of pace.

Today’s discussion: Camping Stoves.

I’ve used a few different stoves over the years, and have come up with some pretty firm opinions about them. The problem with those opinions is that they’re based on stoves that are at least a decade old. The advances in stoves aren’t as sudden or spectacular as those in GPSs, but things do change over a decade. To start with, though, I’ll mention the stoves I’ve used before and what I thought about them. Then I’ll have to forget all that as I look at the new contenders. In no particular order (really, it’s just as each one occurs to me), here they are:

 

MSR Whisperlite

This Whisperlite is the first shellite stove I ever used, and one of my earliest memories of camping was of watching the ring of blue flames as they sputtered and then died. The Whisperlite we had was light, quiet, cooked quickly and had excellent control. The three legs were stable for any but a large pot and it could cook a meal for a family (parents, three ravenous children and any accompanying friends). The only problem with it was one of reliability. It was a fool that took it more than ten metres from the house without a maintenance kit. It was a genius who could actually fix it with that maintenance kit. The fuel nozzle was almost permanently blocked, and no amount of work on track, back home or in the shop seemed to be able to fix this for long. Thus, the theoretically powerful stove would usually stop working within a day or two of setting out. It also suffered from pumps that needed frequent maintenance. It was usually pretty simple (sometimes just a new o-ring) but it always seemed to be required at the most inconvenient times.

 

MSR Dragonfly

The Dragonfly was our replacement for the Whisperlite. Similar basic concept but with fewer parts, easier access for maintenance, a more powerful burner and sturdier legs. The fuel pump was slightly different from the earlier ones, and I don’t think it’s ever needed on-track repairs. The stove only failed twice. The first time was when a brazed joint was melted by the heat of the burner, apparently a problem only with that particular generation of this model. The stove could still be used (if awkwardly), and the repair was fairly simple. The second failure really wasn’t the fault of the stove, rather of someone who stored some metho in one of the MSR shellite bottles. No one has ever owned up to this act, but 50-50 metho and shellite wouldn’t work in the stove. This was years before the omnifuel model seen today. Sounds like a pretty much ideal replacement for the Whisperlite, apart from one thing. It’s ridiculously noisy. Conversation in the entire campsite, let alone around the stove, is almost impossible. It sounds like a jet firing up.

Coleman (I believe) Brick

I have no idea what this stove was actually called, but I think of it as the Brick (those who know my nomenclature habits would be aware that I call most pieces of technology Bricks, regardless of their size, shape, weight and reliability). The burner was of the same style (though not nearly as loud) as the Dragonfly. The fuel tank and pump were built into the base and the whole thing was incorporated into a metal box. I can’t recall is ever failing, but it lacked the power of a dragonfly and did weigh about as much as a house brick.

 

Trangia

On school camps, we were forbidden to bring out light, compact, efficient shellite stoves, and had to use the school-approved Trangia instead. I believe this was a safety precaution, though someone did manage to detonate theirs on the first school camp I can remember using them. The fireball (and subsequent attempts to repair the distorted borrowed stove) was caused by the contents of the pot, not the burner. To this day, I find it hard to believe that he didn’t realise butter was an oil and shouldn’t have been extinguished with water when the half-packet he’d melted caught fire. Aside from that minor incident, the Trangia is a pretty reliable design. In essence, a cup gets filled with metho and set alight. There’s not much control over the temperature of this. Where most stoves suffer from problems simmering, the Trangia had trouble doing anything else. Cooking took forever. Despite its simplicity, the Trangia was nearly as heavy as the Brick, and easily three times the size. It could only use Trangia pots, which were small enough that it could actually heat them and thus too small to make food for a group.

Jetboil

This wasn’t a family stove. I went walking with someone who used one a while back, and liked the idea. Quiet, light, efficient, fast, reliable. Sounds great. But while the pots were idea for one or maybe two people, they were far too small for three. I have disagreements with gas canisters, both because it’s hard to obtain them sometimes and because they stop working in the cold. The cold is the one time a stove cannot be allowed to be unreliable. So, despite the novel design, I never felt the Jetboil was a serious stove for me to consider.

Gas Canister Stove

As with the Brick, the name of this stove eludes me. I never actually used it, but someone else in my group did on one memorable trip. It was a precursor to the Jetboil, suffered all the same problems and lacked the efficiency and speed; however, turned upside-down it could be used as a blowtorch for browning the top of a pasta bake (well, pasta boil and torch). Alas the fuel coming out of the nozzle was liquid rather than gas, so a fair amount of it sprayed onto the food before burning and left a distinctive taste behind. Beside the detonating stove, the plume of orange fire rising from the food rates pretty highly in camping stove experiences.

 

MSR Windpro

Another MSR, and another stove that I haven’t used that much. It’s quiet, fairly powerful and not too heavy. I’d consider it somewhat like a Gas version of the Whisperlite, with one major advantage. The nozzle never once blocked up while we were using it. It wasn’t without its foibles though, one of them being the name. “Windpro” implies a certain resilience in the face of adverse weather. I believe this is because there are many small burners around its edge, and if the wind blows half of them out the others can keep it alight. Unfortunately, half the stove isn’t working until this happens. If a particularly hard gust comes through, the entire stove can go out. Now this was really no worse than the Whisperlite, and a heat shield would protect it from the wind anyway, but the name implied so much more…

 

Esbit Solid Fuel Stove

This little piece of folded tin takes out the award as the lightest and smallest stove. Without fuel bottles and pumps, it saves additional space. There was nothing to go wrong with it, as it was basically a pot stand with space to put a few cubes of fuel underneath. Most people think these are a bit of a joke, a slow stove for pretend bushwalkers. I admit that I was swayed by that, until I bought one for $15 as an emergency stove. When I didn’t end up needing an emergency stove on that walk, I decided to try it out at home to see how it performed against a proper stove. Its competitor was a Dragonfly, and in terms of rapid heating, there was no contest; the MSR took line honours with ease. But it wasn’t really a fair contest, with the Dragonfly using its aluminium heat reflector around the pot. So I tried again, borrowing the Dragonfly’s reflector and putting it with the Coleman. Discounting the time taken to start the stove, it boiled 2L of water only seconds slower than the Dragonfly. Considering the essentially instant start-up, it was really the faster by far. The weight of fuel consumed to boil 2L of water was almost identical, and it didn’t require the carrying of bottles as well as fuel. The only drawback to these nifty stoves is that there’s no variation of temperature. There’s boil (two cubes) and simmer (one cube). You can’t boil and then drop it to a simmer. Given the reliability and weight though, that seems a small price to pay.

So what does all this mean for considering stoves now? Well reliability is key, which puts the solid fuel and dragonfly up top. Weight’s important too, which puts the little $15 stove out in a league of its own.

As I said, these aren’t the latest stoves. The Jetboil probably hasn’t changed since then, likewise for the solid fuel, but the others have.

Whisperlites are meant to be far more reliable now, thanks to new nozzles designed to burn pretty much any liquid fuel in existence. Quiet, adjustable and now (supposedly) reliable, they’re certainly back in contention.

The modern Dragonfly is heavier than a Whisperlite, but still heats faster and remains immensely reliable. They also have the new multi-fuel nozzles.

Optimus have a new equivalent of the Brick, called a Hiker+, which looks pretty impressive. They’re certainly reliable, and the weight’s come down a lot. Having the fuel bottle built into the stove does save having a separate pump that can go wrong. The only issue I have with them now is that it’s nearly impossible to install a wind-shield because the lid gets in the way. The case provides partial protection anyway, but that’s not the same as a full shield and protector. Without that, fuel efficiency will drop.

Primus (alright, does anyone else laugh every time they see “Optimus” & “Primus” written together, or is that just me?) has a very nice stove called the Omnifuel. Its design and specs are around the same as a Dragonfly, though it’s meant to be slightly quieter. I’ve always likes MSRs and was going to ignore these, until they released the upgraded Omnilite. It’s a titanium version of the Omnifuel. Now it’s not much lighter, but it seems to be the most fuel-efficienct shellite stove around, and that is definitely worth some attention.

I never liked Trangias before and, while there are a few new designs around, none of them spark my fancy now either.

Gas canisters are still a no-go. Loss of reliability in the extreme cold is one problem, but not the only one. On this walk, I’ll be refilling fuel halfway through while passing Melaleuca. With shellite, I can reuse the same bottles. With Gas, I’d have to get new ones and carry the empty ones.

So where does solid fuel stand in all this? The stoves haven’t really changed at all. Some super lightweight ones around, but no real change to the technology (such as it is). They are light, reliable and quiet. They are not adjustable.

Most food is going to be along the lines of just add water, because that’s lighter and needs less cooking (so less fuel). All you really need for that is boiling water, which the solid fuel can provide. It’s easy to turn it up to a higher temperature (add another cube) but can’t be turned down afterwards. I can’t think of any meals now that will actually need to turn down the temperature partway through. Everything will be pre-cooked and dehydrated beforehand, so there won’t be any slow stewing going on…

Essentially, I’m left with two legitimate contenders. While I like the silence of a Whisperlite, I can’t bring myself to trust one for a month. The Omnilite seems the way to go in shellite, where every gram of fuel I don’t burn is going to count. If I don’t need the adjustability, solid fuel sounds perfect. I guess it all comes down to the menu; I’d better start planning that next.