UKH

PRIMUS has launched the EtaSolo, £80, the latest addition to the award-winning Eta-Series of high-efficiency stoves. It’s a wind stable, lightweight and extremely compact integrated cooking system.

Read more at http://www.ukclimbing.com/gear/news.php?id=2714

The EtaSolo will be reviewed at UKClimbing.com and there will be a chance to win one quite soon.

In reply to UKC Gear: Why do I have a feeling these will be referred to among climbers as the 'Primus Jetboil'?

In reply to UKC Gear:

@ Primus: To slow, just bought a jet boil last month...

In reply to UKC Gear:

Seriously though, isn't that just a jetboil?

In reply to mlmatt:

Pretty much, but hopefully more robustly put together - better pietzo, and what appears to be a better locking mechanism. The only omission is a cup a la the Jetboil which protects the windscreen and heat exchanger in transit (you'd be a bit buggered if you couldn't connect pot to stove!), and the general usefulness of having a cup. I wish they'd (Jetboil incl.) do a remote canister attachment - that way you'd get even more out of a canister and reduce the height of the stove, maybe making it more stable.

In reply to PeterM:
The jetboil burner doesn't have a preheater coil in does it; so most of the reasons for moving to a remote canister are nullified?

In reply to Reach>Talent:

It doesn't have any pre-heat mechanism. I was thinking of reducing the height of the stove while in use and being able to turn a canister over to get the most out of it. You'd also be able to insulate it.

In reply to PeterM:
You don't want to insulate a canister, adiabatic cooling means they get bloody cold. Inverting a cylinder feed into a jetboil type stove will leave you searching for your eyebrows and wondering where the smell of burning neoprene is coming from! Having played with a couple of jetboils the valve isn't nearly subtle enough to take a liquid feed.

In reply to UKC Gear:

Just bought a Jet boil i think i will actually consider upgrading to this, heres why:

Straight out of the box the Primus version comes with more, canister supports, pot supports and a hanging kit.

all these accessories would cost you upward of £40 and you would still have to make the hanging kit.

Pots supports are a great idea cause then you can use the stove to cook just like a simple butane stove, i have a coffee machine (you know the type with the water chamber at the bottom which you screw together) and it is not compatible with a jet boil unless i shell out another £20 or hold it over the burner for 3 minutesish.

Hanging kit, although i would rarely use is pretty cool, and canister supports make the stove more stable and keep the canister off the frozen ground in winter.

I have to say that primus have actually put stuff in the box which people will use instead of fancy colours and a heat indicator that looks naff and is designed for people who probably should not be using a stove in the first place.

chur

In reply to PeterM:

What, like this?

http://www.campman.com/images/jetboil%20helios.jpg

In reply to George Ormerod:

No, that's for group cooking, but a variation thereof. Maybe something like this:
http://www.hitchnhike.co.uk/acatalog/gas_stove_accessories.html

In reply to PeterM:
That is a jetboil burner modified to take a remote cylinder with a built in pre-heater so the cylinder operates when inverted. If you use a remote adaptor like the one you linked to and try and invert the cylinder it wont work.
The only major benefit of having a remote cylinder is the ability to invert it - if the burner is designed correctly.

In reply to Reach>Talent:

Ok, there is obviously something about this I don't understand (as I'm sure you've already guessed), so can I ask you to explain briefly (if you have the time) how the pre-heating relates to the canister being inverted? I thought the pre-heating was for more efficient burning at the burner. Apologies for the ignorance.

In reply to PeterM:
A slightly bodged description, there are several factors that are important (i've missed a few) - apologies:

- If you invert they cylinder you'll be drawing off liquid; liquid is more dense than gas so contains more fuel per unit of volume. The burner (hole size, flame spreader etc) is optimised for a small range of flow rates.
The valve controls the volume passing through it in a given time so you get more gas going through the burner which causes flaring and flame lift off which are a bad thing (if the stove doesn't blow out you'll get a huge fireball). You need to redesign the valve to allow tighter flow control.

- Liquids don't burn generally so you need to vaporise them. If you blow liquid through the burner you get a jet of liquid out which then vaporises and burns this moves the 'flame front' up a long way probably to beyond the base of your pan. So you need to pre-vaporise the fuel by heating it before it reaches the nozzle. This is normally done with a heater coil in the flame area (you can just see it if you look closely at the Jetboil helios photo above).

To give you an idea of how much difference putting liquid 'v' gas up a burner makes:
In 1999 I was involved in a little engineering project to build a gas powered beacon as part of the millenium beacon chain across the UK. Our beacon was powered by a domestic propane cylinder which had been inverted to draw off liquid (we'd intended to use a comercial dip-tube cylinder but ordered the wrong adaptor). This beacon burnt through 47kg of propane in not much over half an hour. This burner was designed deliberately without a pre-heater coil to give a taller flame; we ran it on gas once as a test and it produced a soft flame about 3ft, high we ran it on liquid and it produced a 20-25ft high flame. The jet of liquid in the middle of the flame was still visible at over 8ft above the burner!

In reply to Reach>Talent:

My Omni Fuel works with the cylinder inverted (and put on top of the pan for a bit of extra ooomff) and that has no pre-heater. The is only minor flaring before the burner is hot, so I see no reason why the jetboil wouldn't work in a similar way.

In reply to Reach>Talent:

Thanks for that. It was the Gas/Liquid bit I wasn't getting when the canister was inverted.

In reply to George Ormerod: If you tilt a jetboil ten degrees it flares a lot. If you totally inverted the canister in one (you could actually do this, you can get remote canister extensions) then bad things would probably happen.

The omnifuel does have some kind of preheat system (it's in their blurb) but it's not as obvious as the old himalaya and the XGK' chunky copper preheat tubes

In reply to steve456:


It might be in their blurb, but then only pre-heat is by dint of the stove body heating up, which with the pressure drop across the control valve seems to be enough, even at -10C.

In reply to George Ormerod:
The omni-fule has a heater it is just less obvious than a conventional coil. The whole of the nozzle block is designed to heat up and vaporise the fuel, which I believe explains the slightly longer primeing times of the Omnifuel compared to an XGK.

http://www.moontrail.com/details/primus/omni-fuel/omnifuel-ti-inhand.jpg

In reply to Reach>Talent:

Found this interesting thread (I know - how sad does that sound!)
I have the Markill converter I linked to above somewhere, but the idea of using it with the Jetboil would require some way of getting copper from the tube to the flame.

http://pedaldamnit.blogspot.com/2010/02/jetboil-personal-cooking-system-rem...

In reply to PeterM:
Yes, you'd need to do some surgery on the underside of the jetboil and an under efficient heat exchanger is almost as bad as no exchanger. I'm quiet tempted by trying a modification though: The most efficient exchangers are the coil type but they require some fairly nifty plumbing skills. I may have a chance to play with a micro-bore pipe bender in a few weeks time so I'll have a bit of a think