You've got stronger legs than me Doc, or else the rest of your kit is much lighter than mine! Add tent, sleeping bag and mat, a day's water, food for a couple of days, something waterproof to wear, maps etc etc... exhausted already! I'd much rather a 1-pint collapsible, quite a healthy saving in weight.
To me "one stove" implies one for something one commonly does. It my case that would clearly be the Svea 123 with the Sigg set as part and parcel thereof. Easy to choose because I bring it on every overnight hike, sometimes with, or sometimes without, a brass kero one-pinter. But I always bring the Svea/Sigg. Car camping or household use? Coleman 413.
The 111 is a wee bit heavy for hiking, I'll admit that. But for skiing, canoeing, packrafting and kayaking, it is a brilliant stove. In those roles it has replaced my MSR Dragonfly, and I'm trying out the Primus 210 for the hiking and snowshoeing. There is a lot to be said for having the tank and the pump together. While my Dragonfly has given sterling service since 2004, it is rather annoying to assemble, and it always drops fuel when you take it apart.
Horses for courses - what might be great for car camping could be un-luggable on a multi-day hike. Best to pick one for each scenario: 1- Ultralight hiking 2- Apocalypse escape - bug-out bag 3- Bike camping 4- Motorbike camping 5- Car camping - tailgating - caravanning 6- Boating 7- Off-grid home cooking Also consider what might be confiscated on a commercial airline. I nearly lost my 50 year old Trangia and a Coleman 425 on one flight. Some airlines ban the carriage of any stove that has EVER had fuel in it, even in checked baggage!
I had to leave behind my empty fuel bottle with the Dragonfly with Air Canada. Not a big deal, but I wonder how my 111 would have fared in the same situation...Perhaps I could have pretended the 210 was an ornamental art object...
The only way I was able to get them on board was to fill the fuel tanks up with water, and empty it out while they watched. The Trangia had been with me around the world, and the Coleman fed our family around the USA. It would have been sad to lose them!
I would have a hard time picking a single “best” stove, even just limiting it to hiking trips, given the variety of trips to be taken: - Day hikes when you just want tea. - Multiday backpacks covering many miles. - The same, but covering fewer miles. - Trips where you need to find fuel in tiny towns. - Trips where a major goal is “gourmet” meal preparation. - Extreme cold/windy conditions. - And so on and on. For many years I used a Svea 123 for all of these kinds of trips (plus car camping, bicycling, canoeing, and occasionally cooking at home.) But I wouldn’t say it was “best” for all of these tasks. I guess if I really had to choose a single stove for everything I do, I’d take the 123. But this probably reflects nostalgia more than it does any objective comparison of stove models. ….Arch
It is paradoks "The only one" must be compromise And could not to be "the best for ...." 123 and PT-2 the same idea
This has the makings of a friendly mud slinging contest1 Everyone is at fault but me :-) The answer is of course a Trangia 25! Before I stumbled into this forum I only had one stove and that was a Trangia 25 and it met all my needs. These days I have at least 10 Trangia 25:s and countless gas, gasoline and kerosene stoves and each outing is preceded by a rambling diatribe on which three stoves to take. Al the best! Lars
@bem1965 Lars, I'm with you all the way. Or at least 90% of the way. I'm still tossing up between a Trangia 25 or a Trangia 27 with a billy. On the burner side it is the simple genius of it either way. On the pot-and-windshield side I think I would go the 27+billy just because it allows me to cover everything from solo to a crowd while still being weight efficient.
That gave me a bit of a start. As a film camera nut I could imagine trouble at screening since some people don't like their film being x-rayed. But to discover that the trouble was looking at old cameras on his phone in flight, and then later pulling a nearly identical camera from his bag, well that means that I have some risk if I travel with some of my cameras. Some look enough like today's cameras, but some don't have modern equivalents.
I opted for the Army no.12 with the proviso I wasn't carrying it. If I have to lug a stove, it will be a Trangia (or close relative) in some form. Lately, I've been using the Swedish Mil. mess set, often accompanied by the elderly 1935 pattern French set. Good for alcohol burner and fire cookery.
While I have only flown a little, I carried my film in a lead lined pouch. That may not even be allowed now days. I just heard a guy say he was in line with TSA, realizing he had a folding knife and scissors on his belt. He got out of line and hid his stuff in a plant. It was still there waiting for him when he got back.
One of my favourite "back in the day" stories is of catching a flight in 1998. On arriving at the gate I was taken aside because I had a Swiss Army knife on my belt. This wasn't permitted. I had to put it in my carry-on luggage.
When I was an assistant Attorney General in the last few years of my career, one of my colleagues discovered that a local state warehouse received knives recovered by the TSA at check-in; how they came to be in state ownership I never quite worked out. But there were bushels of pocket knives, about half Swiss Army, to be bought at very low prices.
That reminds me of a story doing the rounds when airline terrorism and random bombs were a common occurrence. Apparently the researchers wanted to know how vigilant airport users were in reporting an unaccompanied case. In New York the case was reported in 6 minutes, London 4 minutes, Sydney 1 hour 40, Auckland the cleaners picked it up the next morning and took it to lost property but the last airport was Cape Town. They had 3 attempts. First case was stolen in 4 minutes second was gone in less than a minute and the person setting the third case was mugged in the carpark.
