Stove Experiments

Well, you may recall from the last blog that I was suffering from plantar fasciitis. Although I still am aware of my right heel, the pain has diminished significantly. I am continuing to wear the splint at night, and am slowly moving my mileage up on my training hikes. So that is all good news. 

Today I am just going to chronicle a quick experiment I did with a couple of stoves that I have. As a little background, I anticipate a fair amount of wind along the coast, so I want to make sure that the stove I take will work in the wind. I have two stoves. One is my trusty Jetboil Ti-Sol which has been on every backpacking trip and long-distance hike I’ve done over the last 10 years. It seems to handle wind OK, although if it’s very gusty, it doesn’t do as well. The other stove is the MSR PocketRocket 2 Deluxe. This stove gets very high marks in windy conditions. So I thought I would pit the two stoves against each other in a wind test, and then take the one that performs the best. 

The simple setup was to time how long each stove took to boil 2 cups of water in a breeze. The breeze was provided by a box fan set at medium and high. The starting temperature of the water was 55F, and the wind speed, measured with an anemometer, was 6mph and 9mph and steady. The stoves were set up using the pots I would use on the trail, and each stove was tested independently 3 times at each wind speed. I am aware there are several flaws in the design of the test, but my goal was to see which stove/pot configuration would work the best. And also if either stove would flat out fail in the wind. 

After all the test there was a clear winner and surprisingly it was the Jetboil. In fact at 9mph in my set up I never got the MSR to bring the water to a boil. It never blew out, but the wind seemed to blow the flame off to the opposite side of the pot so heat transfer was insufficient to get to boil. 

I know that reviews of the current models of the Jetboil line are poor in even light wind, but my decade old stove does not suffer from that. Of course they don’t make it anymore. 

Now, testing in the basement with a fan is a far cry from the real world, so I plan to take both stoves outside on an overnight and re-test. Stay tuned…

See you back in 2 weeks,