Looking thru ebay I stumbled across this upright A4 can-top stove Ultralight Gas Stove Single Burner Adjustable for Mountaineering Camping | eBay It needs its stabiliser but so did the early Epigas stoves I saw in 90s which needed a big black disc for their tall aerosol height cans... I think I would preferan additional teg stove style bracing legs or 3 big tent pegs as additional security. I wonder if any EU retailer will brand it now that 206 canisters have become 206GLS (with rudimentary safety valve) and are no longer the cheap option? A4 canisters are cheap and widely available, more so than 206 ones now I think?
What's the appeal? Unstable with a pan full even with the stabiliser. Tall - needing a tall windshield to match. Height also an issue when cooking in a small tent. Yeah, I know the H&S script but me & many other autumn to spring backpackers cook 'indoors'.
1 Cheap easily available canisters (eg in supermarkets even where no other kinds are available). 2 Its no worse than early EPigas tall cans I remember, (but I did say the teg stove style stabiliser would be better*: presumably if branded the commissioning company might insist on that). If moderately commercially successful or fails because of height it might still beget lighter horizontal A4 stoves ). *Tegstove 3 I thought official instructions for can-top stoves usually contained dire warnings about using no form of enclosing windshield at all due to worries of liability for cannister overheating and so presumed most low level summer campers wouldn't use one due to that fear, just relying being on leeward side of something. When my 27 was briefly replaced by a can-top gas stove for summer cycle camping I didn't use any windshield for that reason.
Point taken. I've had no issues getting gas (piercables or screw) abroad but many years since I had the need. I was in a outdoor store today & noted plenty of the old piercables but not a chain of stores that will likely have a branch where you one when in need! Abroad in more recent years had no issues getting meths or paraffin. Both cheap even if the hardware that uses it may be more of a premium. If I ever get back to the Pyrenees backpacking I'll be using alcohol on my speedster. As for windshields, even for summer, if a stove won't brew in a hoolie it's off the list for me. That said I do few trips in summer. I'm very set in my ways! I just bought my lad a Jetboil type stove from Alpkit this week as he's getting into hiking & camping & I had to resist the urge to say 'It's not for me' at the till! I am sorting him out a Trangia for 'base-camp' use.
My daughter asked me to select an appropriate stove for her and her husband-to-be. After asking her a bunch of questions, I got them an MSR Windburner. It was actually difficult for me to make the purchase, reflecting that the only stove they would have is a canister stove. Horrors! ....Arch
Spiritburner, ArchMc, I have a few canister stoves and it is very very strange knowing ahead of time that the stove will be ready to go in less than 1 second. PS. if anyone lost a canister stove on the PCT San Bernardino National Forest in May, I will be happy to return. Tell me what and where you left it out to cool. Seems my stoves with a few trail miles burn differently. Stay safe HOT SoCal
You can just get an adapter and run any thread on canister stove instead. I run my collection with adapters (various ones, remote burners, direct 90 degree ones, etc) and straight cassette stove type canisters since they're incredibly inexpensive ($0.75 to $1.25 a can for around 8oz of fuel) Stable enough for my purposes to run 10" full weight kitchenware on my Soto Amicus (4 legs helps), Kovea V1 (wide legs really help), Snow Peak Gigapower 2.0 (4 legs again) and even the smaller supports on the Soto Micro Regulator. If anything, the legs of the stove determine how well it holds the pan up. The adapter definitely works on inverted feed stoves and if anything it excels there since the canister doesn't chill down as it runs low and lose pressure as much. Have a 90 degree type adapter coming in, I actually have found that the butane canisters need a little bit of warmth given how easily they chill. In the case of inverted canister operation, I briefly held the bottle near the exhaust of a heat exchanger pot and kept a hand on it to feel for warmth, it didn't need anything beyond a minute of warming to get the pressure up again and the canister didn't really go above ambient (felt the same to the touch). Cassette stoves have a little heating plate to help warm the bottle up in operation anyways so worst case I'll just have to stick a heat shield in and touch the canister every often. I find that with cassette stoves I can actually get a slightly warm bottle (they're rated to be definitely safe to 40C or so due to transportation (DoT in the US) requirements and cases of them sitting in a trailer) where they're intended to be used. Just be sure to be safe and don't mess around with warming the thing up with anything more than "comfortable room temperature." Also make sure you get a good adapter, I've got several and found there's 2 flaws that cause them to be a bit wonky. One type has a less stable configuration where it can wobble minus any weight loaded on it since it doesn't have as "positive" of a lock. The other flaw is that the outer ring's diameter is too small and stoves like the Sotos which have the second o-ring and flange don't fit inside. For stoves without the second o-ring or the flange you should be okay. For reference the one in the photo is from "Campingmoon." G-Works makes one but my very old (decade old) one doesn't fit Sotos. The Campingmoon is a twist lock, the G-Works just clicks on after aligning the notch and a super cheapo orange colored no-name one that's heavy weight and is both wobbly without weight loading and doesn't fit my Sotos twists like the Campingmoon but has a less "positive" mechanism. The one you see pictured below is actually designed for operation with the canister lying on the side, which is why it has legs. It also is the only one that'll work with my Sotos due to the larger outer diameter.
Imust admit I have seen so many fires with leaking cylinder of that type. I have a stove and a heater but they do not get used much and they are leak tested with leak solution EVERY time. The only time I have needed to use a fire extinguisher in anger was when the next door caravan was coking with one of those common stoves that use the cylinder and it went up in flames.I actually trust a 111B more then them! I use them for refilling other cylinders I can't get now.
For the amount of camp fuel most people use in a year, the cost of said fuel really isn't the deciding factor on what stove they get. There's hugely more BTU's in a gallon of kero than there is in the equivalent $$$ in butane, yet far more butane stoves are sold, because easy is more important than $$$ when you're talking about a difference of $5/yr.
I had heard of problems with flat A4 stoves caused by too large pans overhanging the cylinder area and causing overheating but no other problems: the Go system Dynasty flat A4 stoves (and a halfords one I saw) have raised vertical arms on end of rightmost pot rests presumably to limit pan size or stop a pan covering cylinder too much. I think the flat stoves vent gas if canister overheats == flames? I had not seen anyone claim the canister design itself was a problem for leaking before (and give a reason why).
I must admit my son has a canister stove, a Snow Peak I think. He never knows how much fuel he has left. I could never get past the pile of empty cartridges left over to just throw away.
Bring the cannisters home, pop a hole in them, toss them in my scrap metal pile. No big deal. I do prefer the refillable propane cylinders.
@tra It's not the canister as such but the small O ring it fits into. With these flat stoves and heaters a clumsy ( read joe public) person tends to put the cylinder in at angles/ roughly. The O rings wear then leak. Crazy russsian hacker on YT has tried a few stoves and had big leaks from them. One caused a fireball. I have a few adaptors for them and most take a couple of attempts to fully seal. Sure I am probably OTT with it as I used to work with gasses so leak test everything well.
I suppose you could still say its a stove design problem (the clumsy user error should be prevented by design if possible), but I always wondered why the plastic nozzle was there: surely the bought in Lindal valve would be as cheap without it and it seems vulnerable and now from your quote a bit of a liability in that kind of stove. I had read of the Camping&CaravanningClub discussing such stoves' safety with Safety Bodies but before your post presumed it was overheating from large pots prevention: I wonder what they can do: 1) could they mandate that future stoves mechanically ensure that the A4 canister is axially in line with inlet connector before it can be slid in (axially aligned only) to make the connection? 2) Could they insist that the canisters' nozzle is removed (the A4+ ? ), so that new stoves connect in same way as the kovea threaded-to-A4 adaptor does (which is similar to the way the Camping Gaz CV TwistAndClick disposables connect. Could this be backwards compatible in any way at all or would previous A4 stoves all be landfill / Frankenstove parts for stovies? 3) Just ban the A4 Canisters? Which made me wonder something else: I think the TwistAndClick connection method (used by Camping Gaz and Kovea Style adaptor/ the OP stove) might be technically superior to a partial UEF thread, and given that apparently the French may be abandoning the Gaz disposables for threaded: what if future stoves were forbidden from attaching using the threads but had to use the TwistAndClick method, BUT were required to cope with the different well diameters of epigas style, CampingGaz nonthreaded CV style, and perhaps an A4 descendant with no spigot)? One stove connection for all disposable cannisters .....
"Forbidden"? Are you proposing an international regulation of stove connectors? Certainly it would be most convenient for users if all stoves used the same connectors, but I think each manufacturer's goal is to sell their brand of fuel. ....Arch
I was referring to standards bodys such as the BSI and body responsible for EN417 (which have required the rudimentary valve in new 206GLS piercables (ie have effectively 'banned' new manufacture/retail import? of old 206 canisters wherever governments have accepted their standards....)) I not sure why I would want a wild west approach to consumer gas safety? Governments currently control gas safety via the standards they reference in legislation. It seems one of the things that is a Governments job.....
Duplicate of the above post cos my edit took longer than 10 minutes I was referring to standards bodys such as the BSI and body responsible for EN417 (which have required the rudimentary valve in new 206GLS pierceables (ie have effectively 'banned' new manufacture/retail import? of old simple 206 canisters wherever governments have accepted their standards....)) I'm not convinced proprietary standards are good for anyone in the long run: if camping gas stoves only work with CV cans and other manfacturers stoves work with more widely available threaded ones of varying suppliers then their market will be gradually shrinking. Democratic Governments(representing the people) surely have a legitimate interest in avoiding the people being locked into one supplier of gas canisters.... Given that Dr Roger Caffin managed to design a connector that works the same way (TwistToLock) on either threadless CV or threaded 'Epigas style' canisters, I'm a bit disappointed stove manufacturers haven't adopted that approach themselves (MSR had one attempt but he seemed dubious of their method's security of attachment). As Kovea style A4 to threaded adaptors use the twistlockmethod, that would seem to indicate no patent problems from CampingGaz... I not sure why I would want a wild west approach to consumer gas safety? Governments currently control gas safety via the standards they reference in legislation. It seems one of the things that is a Governments job..... I am however more interested in the possible Technical responses of safety standard bodies to A4 appliance problems...
