Alcohol backpacking stove

EVERNEW Titanium alcohol stove

This might be of interest for my outdoorsy friends.

I bought this little alcohol stove a while ago and I am still very impressed with its performance.

The stove weighs only 34 grams. Yesterday I did a few tests to determine the efficiency of the stove.

I carefully measured out 20 ml of denatured alcohol (methylated spirits) and set it alight.

It took around 1:30 for the flame to burn as it should from both sets of holes.

A pot containing 500 ml cold water (+/- 10 Celsius) was placed on the stove at 1:30

The water boiled furiously at 7:15

All the fuel was consumed at 8:00

IMHO this is quite remarkable and efficient.

One can thus state that 20 ml of fuel is sufficient to heat water to have a noodle meal, couscous or oats and a cup of tea/coffee. 

Assuming 2 hot meals a day would mean 40 ml/day lets round that up to 50 ml/day. In other word a 5 day hike would then require only 250 ml i.e. only 250 grams of weight to carry.

The only disadvantage I can see. The flame is almost invisible when it burns during daylight. It is very difficult to know if the flame is burning or whether it has been blown out by the wind. For the record that has not happened to me yet. I am planning to make a lightweight windscreen partly for obvious reasons and secondly to concentrate the heat onto the pot so as to increace the efficiency further.

The image below was taken at dusk, the flame is near invisible in day light. 

The EVERGREEN Titanium alcohol stove

Lithium-ion battery capacity test

I did a capacity test on my newly imported lithium-ion battery: Type DC-12680 the capacity is supposed to be 6800 mAH.

The image below shows clearly that the capacity is only about 2400 mAH i.e. 1/3 of the advertised capacity.

The battery has been on charge for 9 hours since then and is still not fully charged (Red LED still on). I therefor assume the batteries cannot be recharged at a high rate. 

Conclusion: 

It is unacceptable that the capacity is so much lower than the supposed capacity.
Rapid recharging is not possible with the provided charger.

IMHO they are still worthwhile considering. They are compact and weigh almost nothing. This is ideal for back packing with ultra-light QRP equipment.

http://zs6a.blogspot.com/2014/06/ultralight-portable-station-batteries.html

Lithium-ion 6680 mAH battery capacity test.

Activating (almost) ZS/GP-001

I have just returned home after my first attempt at being a SOTA activator (goat)

Yesterday, I spent quite a long time carefully packing my kit in preparation for the trip. We awoke before sunrise and SWAMBO and I hit the road early, we arrived at our destination with some time to spare. In fact on the way I stopped to survey yet another summit: GP-002 on the way.

I immediately erected the telescopic fibre glass mask and hauled up the 20/40m linked inverted vee dipole. With that all done, we quickly took a few photographs for prosperity and then sat down and started connecting the Elecraft K2 to all the paraphernalia: Paddle, microphone, feed line and battery….. It was then I discovered a huge problem. The battery cable was not in the bag, I had inadvertently left it at home.

I had no choice, but to pack up and return home.

Even though no QSOs were made it still was a most pleasant experience. I recon I will do this again sometime.

Click on images for higher resolution.

Perdekop ZS/GP-001 view SE

ZS/GP-001 Perdekop

Ultralight portable station - batteries

A while back I blogged about methods of reducing the weight of my ultralight portable station:

http://zs6a.blogspot.com/2014/05/ultralight-radio.html

I believe I have found the ultimate battery for my ultralight portable station. 

There is nothing new about the product below, but I have not had the opportunity to get first-hand experience with these newish devices.

Normally I would use a 7 AH SLAB - Sealed Lead Acid Battery (typical alarm type battery).

The abovementioned SLAB's had served me very well through the years, but there is only one small problem, they weigh 2350 g each. This weight is fairly substantial and would become an issue on long hikes.

I discovered on e-Bay that there are many Lithium-Ion batteries available with different mAH ratings and IMHO they are pretty reasonably priced.

The 6800 mAH LiON battery (same capacity as the SLAB) weighs is at 162 g. This is only 7% of the weight of the 7000 mAH SLAB and it is a fairly compact unit.

Assuming the “blurb” regarding the LiON batteries can be believed then I think this is the way to go. As some insurance I decided to get a 9800 mAH battery complete with charger.

I cannot wait to field test these units……

9800 mAH LiON battery pack