todays interesting experiments....
Initially, I boiled 250mls of water with hot stoves to test performance. I thought this would be a good real world experiment as 250mls is a good mugfull. Both burners were pretty close, maybe the civvi slightly faster, but i couldn't be sure that wasn't due top some anomalous factor - there was only a few seconds in it, so to my mind, they were equal. But this didn't really establish if one design was inherantly more powerful than another. Maybe the mil-spec model could claw the difference back over a longer burn with a bigger volume. So, I decided to test further.
First off, I emptied both burners and burnt off any excess fuel. Than I added exactly one film-canister full of fuel (probably about 20mls) to each burner. Then I lit them both, and concious of the milspec burner having a longer warm-up time, I used a small butane torch to warm both burners simultaneously. The milspec burner needed more work from the torch, but very quickly (less than 20 seconds), both burners were running at full heat. I then just left them so see which one ran out and self-snuffed first. Afetr about 5 minutes, the civvi model ran out of fuel first - but closely followed (about 20 seconds later) by the milspec model. Conclusion - inconlusive. The difference could have been explained by the harder to heat up military model, they were certainly very evenly matched. Both burners seem to consume fuel at about the same rate - with possibly the civvi version being slightly more thirsty. I would need to test again with a much larger fuel volume to me more certain.
next up, boiling 1 litre of cold water. This is a big boil for a trangia and about tyhe maximum capacity of the Swedish mess kit. I( made sure both burners were up to full heat before putting the cold pan of water on to boil. The civvi burner reached a bouncing boil in 11 minutes, 45 seconds. The military model reached the same point after 14 minutes! That's 2 minutes and 15 seconds slower to boil 1 litre - and this was using a hot burner.
Itr would seem that the civvi model is a little more powerful and maybe slightly more thirsty (I'm not sure on the last point).
My conclusions so far...
Civvi:
Smaller footprint
Lighter (a full civvi including simmer ring, weighs the same as a bone dry military)
Much faster warmup
Cools down much faster
A little more powerful
A simmer ring
Better lid seal
Generally more efficient
Military:
Larger capacity
More robust
Much cheaper
Simpler construction (if that is a factor)
Given the data, it's difficult to reach any other conclusions really. It should be noted though, that the differences are not that big in reality. Similar performance, similar fuel consumption. The only significant factors are the much slower warmup time of the military model and the loger time it takes to boil a big panfull - oh and the simmer ring is a huge bonus for the civvi model IMO (though this can be improvised for the milspec version). Everything else is just little bits & pieces that dont amount to much - but if you have to choose, they do persuade towards the civvi as number 1 choice.
The only thing left to test is ease of lighting, warmup time and heat output during cold and/or windy weather. I've a sneaking suspicion that the civvi model will dramatically out-perform the milspec version in very cold conditions. We'll have to wait for the snow for that test though. :biggthump
Initially, I boiled 250mls of water with hot stoves to test performance. I thought this would be a good real world experiment as 250mls is a good mugfull. Both burners were pretty close, maybe the civvi slightly faster, but i couldn't be sure that wasn't due top some anomalous factor - there was only a few seconds in it, so to my mind, they were equal. But this didn't really establish if one design was inherantly more powerful than another. Maybe the mil-spec model could claw the difference back over a longer burn with a bigger volume. So, I decided to test further.
First off, I emptied both burners and burnt off any excess fuel. Than I added exactly one film-canister full of fuel (probably about 20mls) to each burner. Then I lit them both, and concious of the milspec burner having a longer warm-up time, I used a small butane torch to warm both burners simultaneously. The milspec burner needed more work from the torch, but very quickly (less than 20 seconds), both burners were running at full heat. I then just left them so see which one ran out and self-snuffed first. Afetr about 5 minutes, the civvi model ran out of fuel first - but closely followed (about 20 seconds later) by the milspec model. Conclusion - inconlusive. The difference could have been explained by the harder to heat up military model, they were certainly very evenly matched. Both burners seem to consume fuel at about the same rate - with possibly the civvi version being slightly more thirsty. I would need to test again with a much larger fuel volume to me more certain.
next up, boiling 1 litre of cold water. This is a big boil for a trangia and about tyhe maximum capacity of the Swedish mess kit. I( made sure both burners were up to full heat before putting the cold pan of water on to boil. The civvi burner reached a bouncing boil in 11 minutes, 45 seconds. The military model reached the same point after 14 minutes! That's 2 minutes and 15 seconds slower to boil 1 litre - and this was using a hot burner.
Itr would seem that the civvi model is a little more powerful and maybe slightly more thirsty (I'm not sure on the last point).
My conclusions so far...
Civvi:
Smaller footprint
Lighter (a full civvi including simmer ring, weighs the same as a bone dry military)
Much faster warmup
Cools down much faster
A little more powerful
A simmer ring
Better lid seal
Generally more efficient
Military:
Larger capacity
More robust
Much cheaper
Simpler construction (if that is a factor)
Given the data, it's difficult to reach any other conclusions really. It should be noted though, that the differences are not that big in reality. Similar performance, similar fuel consumption. The only significant factors are the much slower warmup time of the military model and the loger time it takes to boil a big panfull - oh and the simmer ring is a huge bonus for the civvi model IMO (though this can be improvised for the milspec version). Everything else is just little bits & pieces that dont amount to much - but if you have to choose, they do persuade towards the civvi as number 1 choice.
The only thing left to test is ease of lighting, warmup time and heat output during cold and/or windy weather. I've a sneaking suspicion that the civvi model will dramatically out-perform the milspec version in very cold conditions. We'll have to wait for the snow for that test though. :biggthump
