Finally, I gave into temptation and bought a new stove. When I ordered it last week it was only £50 on ebay.co.uk, not far more than buying some non-stick Trangia pans The major difference of this clone over any others, is the heat exchangers on the pan bottoms. Hopefully, they'll mean a litre of fuel goes further. Here's the best photo I could manage These heat exchangers meant that this point was reached after 11 mins, rather than 12.5 mins for the Trangia (1 pint of water). The pans are well marked with measurements. The non stick coating feels high quality, but time will tell. This shows that the Esbit is a little bigger than a Trangia 25, the small Esbit pan is equal to the large Trangia pan. Because of the heat exchangers and the non stick coating, they've thoughtfully provided two non-stick protectors in the set and called them plates. I suppose that they could be used as such, but they're small, flimsy and I've always happily eaten from a Trangia pan. Useful as chopping boards though. The pot grip has special little rubber pips in it to prevent scratching the non stick. How long before a pip escapes is anyone's guess. This picture shows the go-systems gas burner ordered at the same time. £28 ebay. Maybe with the gas, this stove is big enough and civilised enough for family camping? My wife really doesn't get the passion for liquid fuels that my son and I share with the rest of you. The boil time for same amount of same temperature water was down to 2.5 mins with this, but the fuel's expensive. It is always advantageous to have the option for if one or the other fuel isn't easily sourced. It packs differently to Trangia, the gas stove came in this handy heavy duty nylon pouch which is also big enough for the spirit burner and pot grip. They live in the stand/windshield, which then go into the pans. A decent pan lid rounds it all off. And a disappointing lightweight bag, not a strap. So as to the author's views on how it compares to a Trangia? It's made well, without any of the cheapness you find in other clones such as Lidl/Karrimor etc. The weight of it, excluding the gas burner is 1207g, which compared to a Trangia 25 with no kettle but including the multidisk at 1138g is near enough the same. For the price, I'd certainly recommend it. The next test should be to see how much water temperature is raised by a given amount of fuel. The test we did measured speed, not efficiency. Archie and I will do it one day. I'd be interested to know how much meths is required to give the same joules as 230g of butane/propane mix.
I have looked carefully at that Esbit set. The heat exhanger pans should also help with fuel efficiency as well as speed of boil. Look forward to Archie's test reports. I confess that I use gas if I am really "cooking" more than a noodle dish. Civilized, sure and convenient too. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Nice set up, I'd like to try one. This just my experience, but after considerable testing, I'm not sure about the benefit of heat exchanger pans in conjunction with alcohol stoves. Why? I've found considerable flame quenching when using alcohol burners with pans with heat exchangers, they seem to suck the heat out of the flame. This can produce fumes and possibly excessive Co. I didn't find any efficiency benefits over an alcohol stove setup with a standard pan, where the windscreen goes right up the sides of the pot like a Trangia 27/25. One possible advantage (as displayed on this stove) could be you don't need the windscreen to be as tall as the pan (saving some weight and bulk). This is possible because the exchanger so effectively removes heat from the hot gases of the flame that those gases are quite cool on leaving the underside of the pot and there is no benefit in wrapping the pan in them. Different solutions to the same problem, making best use of the available heat in the alcohol flame. I think I've been spending far too much time testing alcohol burners, windscreens and pans the fumes may have sent me as mad as Ben Gunn. Although it has resulted in finding a combination that can boil 2 cups of water with 11g of meths.
Another interesting question arises when you wrote Is it possible to fit the smaller Esbit pan into the Trangia 25 windshield? Is the diameter/height of the pan similar enough? (Before buying a kit for just that pan it would be interesting to know since you obviously have both kits... )
Yes, either Esbit pans will fit into the Trangia windshield. But of course a hybrid set of Trangia windshield and Esbit pans won't pack down to a convenient bundle.
Maybe not, but it would be one hell of a performer with those Esbit heat X-change pans in an Optimus 207B equipped T25 [aka KAP Arctic]. (Probably needs suitably cut out parts of the heat exchanger to seat it over the Trangia windshield pot carriers?) Your posting made my brain go into overdrive...
Yes, but I think it would be even better to have the actual pot resting on the Trangia pot rests and the heat exchanger thingie hanging lower down, catching the hot flame/gasses as they travel from the top of the Opti 207B burner head sideways towards the vertical slit between the pot side and the windshield side. In this very unique application at least. It would combine the best of both worlds: The Trangia heat recovery all along the vertical slit AND the increased heat transfer into the pot by the exchanger on the bottom edge... Provided there's enough vertical space for the heat exchanger height above the T25's burner-carrier aluminium plate of course...
Hi Odd Not in my experiments, IME you really need more of a gap to prevent flame quench. You may find different.
But how would these compare in cold, WINDY, weather?? The T25/27 protects the pots from "wind-chill". Seems not so with the Esbit set! GG
both those are very good points. partly, i'm guilty of consumerism for the sake of it. hopefully, it'll get my wife to give up the awful, bulky butane things that she likes to take when we car camp as a family
