Replacement stove
 

Well, I'm down to my last can of Gaz GT 106 butane for my Gaz Globe Trotter. These butane canisters have been discontinued and are no longer being made :( . So it's time to look for a new light weight stove.

What do you reccomend? I have a couple of MSR bottles lying around so that seems to be an option. My budget is $150.

Coming from a mountian team I would want a stove that works well in winter in the mountians as well in the summer in the swamps of Florida.

I still have my old heat tab stove that will do in a pinch but I think I want to move up a step or two! ;)

Thanks for your input!

http://www.msrcorp.com/stoves/whisper_intl.asp

I used this stove just about every day for 2 years straight burning Kerosene. Due to my weekly cleanings it ran flawlessly. Over the 2 years it only needed a few preheating wicks and a one or two o-rings in the pump.

IIRC I used about a 1L of Kero a week (one pot of coffee in the morning and a soup or pasta plus tea in the evening)

If you have access to white gas it will stay much cleaner but it will burn just about anything you can find.

Sten,
 

do Whisperlites still sound like a C130 at take-off? i had one while i was in Toelz (i thought everyone who was anyone had one in Toelz) along with an Esbit stove (which i still have one or two of lying about)...

i'd recommend them, although when three or four guys were brewing up, it sounded like an incoming Mass-tac...

I just replaced my old Whisperlite International with a new Whisperlite Dragonfly last winter.

It will also burn Coleman Fuel, unleaded, kerosene, or diesel.

It is not silent, but is a lot better than the old XGK my Team Sergeant had. Not a C-130 prop sound, more like an F-16 on afterburners.

It will boil a liter of water in less than four minutes with any of the above fuels, and will run for more than 2 hours straight on 20 ounces of fuel.

Also has a very sturdy base if you want to cook in something more substantial than a canteen cup.

Weighs less than a pound, empty. Good company (they want me to send in the old stove for repair), great service, outstanding products.

TR

+1

They paid the international shipping on, and tossed in a bunch of extra replacement parts for my MSR "water works" when I was living in Vanuatu.

And yes it is still a very loud stove but in an oddly comforting way...

Yep, and the Dragonfly glows pretty brightly as well, but I do not think a heat signature is a problem if you are in a location where it is okay to light off a stove.

The Esbit stoves were very nice and compact for warming things up, I do not believe I ever actually boiled anything with one.

TR

MSR too
 

Just another boost for MSR's

My civilian background (after my short Army stint) is as a wilderness trip leader, and the MSR Dragonfly and Whisperlites seem to be the best. Yep, really loud, and that F-16 comparison is dead on. Also, the shaker jet allows for easy cleaning of the fuel line. Backpacker magazine has a nice little stove search in their gear section.

My tiny bit of advice, which you probably already know coming from the mountains, would be to keep to the liquid fuels as the gaseous variety can condense and foul stoves in cold weather.

Cheers.

Well after a really long break from the backpacking scene I've come back to the fold and have hopped on the "ultralight" backpacking bandwagon, a.k.a. "fastpacking".

During block leave I purchased the Jetboil Personal Cooking System. I decided on getting a canister stove the last time the ODA went up Pikes Peak and all the guys with canister stoves were done boiling water in the time it took me to set-up and prime my 15+ y/o Whisperlite. It still works as good as it did the day I bought it, but these canister stoves are really fast, lightweight, and compact. I decided on the Jetboil specifically because EVERYTHING fits inside the insulated mug.

I won't go into specifics since so many geardo-uber-geeks have written better write-ups than I ever care to do. But it is one of my "best buys" of the year for sure...

The Jetboil is good, but it is a more limited purpose item.

It is as heavy as the MSRs, and requires a proprietary cartridge which you may not find in East BF. It is designed for the recreational campers with access to modern supply systems. The ones that burn gas or kerosene have an advantage.

You can boil 500ml of water with it about 25% faster than with a conventional stove. If you want to cook in anything but the provided container with the heat exchanger, or boil more water than that, a conventional stove will be much better.

It is quieter than the conventional stoves as well.

Just my .02.

TR

Thanks for all the input! I spent some time reviewing the different stoves at BackPacker Magazine and I read all the posts here at least three times. I decided on a MSR stove and the two that I liked were the DragonFly and the Simmerlite. I downloaded both instruction manuals and read through them. The Simmerlite uses only white gas so I eliminated it. The DragonFly will burn most fuels available.

I have decided on the MSR DragonFly and a bunch of Esbit tabs for my old Esbit stove as well.

You all have been very helpful. Thanks again! :D

Philmont burned me on whisperlites. We had three on our crew, two sprung leaks where the hose from the bottle met the burner.

I was hoping to buy a whisperlite, but a pawn shop had a deal on a Dragonfly so I bought that today. It seems to work ok and appears to have all the parts. I like how it can run on different fuels.

What ever happened to the good old M1950?
 

http://onlinemilitaria.net/shopexd.asp?id=4174

I've got three of four of them, and a fistful of spare parts. Except for the leathers in the air pump, they are damn near bulletproof. Takes a little skill to get started (preheat, manipulation of the gas valve). Burns any kind of mogas.

Jesus........
 

Jesus - two other pieces of team equipment that never went to the field. Cleaned and kept in their case for IG inspections.

Hot item in the 80's in 5th Group was the grasshopper stove working of the small camp propane bottles. Worked well just about everywhere. Needed to sleep with the bottles in arctic like conditions but still worked somewhat better than pre-heats.

The style died out years ago. For a while you could get a round stove that sat on the stubby bottles with a larger plastic base. Even those are not to be found these days.

I concur with the observations above for a backpack stove.

I'm still running a Coleman one burner multi fueler I picked up around 1990. While lighter than a PRC77 I would not consider it a backpack stove. More a basecamp, car camper stove - but it is small enough to pack if you wanted to.

If your stove will spend most of it's travel time in a vehicle and most of it's cooking time on a table it's better to go one step up to a slightly larger stove. They handle bigger pots - mostly heating water or frying stuff.

The other pro of the Dragonfly is the extra flame control. Unlike the Whisperlite, the DF has a adjustable nozzle on the stove body itself in addition to the one on the fuel pump. It's considered their "gourmet" stove and allows you to cook much more delicate items.