Thumper Club Forum
Club House => Chatter => Topic started by: steffan on December 14, 2006, 12:08:51 PM
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The month's Geographical Magazine's Explorer's essentials focussed on Ranulph Fiennes. Assuming a polar expedition (in our case read Dragon - Elefant) Ranulph opted for the best available MRS white GAS cooker with screw in bottles. No mention was made of solid or multi-fuel items.
On reading this it occured to me that I have never seen Pat and Ranulph in the same room together. Is it possible that we may have stumbled upon Pat's alter-ego??
Thoughts anyone?
Steffan
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Bugger, my secrets out!
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No, I'm pretty sure Pat has fingers to grab his levers and toes to tramp his pedals. Poor Ranulph hasn't many left, if any, in either department!
"I love to go a wandering**********glaciers*********crevasses**********chipolata" Sorry! Petrol stove exploded.
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MRS white GAS cooker with screw in bottles.
What's "white gas" Steffan? could it possibly be the American useage of the term "gas"? Given that my stove runs on "white" liquid fuel and I've never heard of "white" gas in relation to the butane/propane etc.... ;) Oh and my fuel bottle is a screw in type too!
I suspect us "petrol stovers", can chuckle quietly for a little while longer! (although if I was replacing my current stove it would be with the "omnifuel" model which will run liquid *or* gas!)
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Erm.... am I being a thicko.......but surely the reason that gas (butane etc) is NOT used on polar/everest expeditions is because of the extremely low temperatures it is required to operate in?
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Erm.... am I being a thicko.......but surely the reason that gas (butane etc) is NOT used on polar/everest expeditions is because of the extremely low temperatures it is required to operate in?
Also, isn't US white gas and aviation fuel roughly the same thing? If you get into trouble dropping you can of what the rescue plane/skidoo's runs on is easier than waiting for bottled propane? Actually, same applies to us, get stuck and you burn unleaded (eventually).
Do they still depot fuel on these expeditions? I'd have thought solid fuel would be better for not evaporating/leaking etc. Wasn't one of Scotts problems a lack of decent jerry cans?
Andy
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Was Jerry making cans then?
I'll get my coat....
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Turns out white gas is the same as coleman fuel doh!!
So all you petrol stovers can breath easy. Ranulph is on our side after all...sorry Pat..
Steffan
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Yup - White gas = Coleman fuel. About 2 cents a gallon in the US and about £12 a gallon here? And I think butane has a boilinig point of -1 C - so will not gasify in polar regions. Propane is about -42, so would be better but still not much use. I guess at altitude and in cold places a liquid fuel that you can pressurise will be more use than a gas cannister that you cannot?
R
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lol eyethangyou ;) :)
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next question: is white spirit the same stuff?
S
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next question: is white spirit the same stuff?
S
Nope!
tbh I'm not sure exactly how I would classify it, it's cleaner than petrol etc, and parraffin. Probably closest to avgas at a wild guess, though that *is* a guess(!) I find it's not particularly better than unleaded (in a stove) and it's even more expensive :o so I don't think I've even got a can here to check... GC?
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Aye Smudge,
Not been decorating lately then? Always have a drop about the place for paint brush cleaning. Was under £2-00 for 2.5l last time round. Parrafin has more tax on it now I think, but no idea of cost per litre.
Avgas is just parrafin with added calories isn't it. Obtained when emptying helicopter fuel drums before return! Goes well in the old weed burner. Never resorted to using it in the 'Tilley' just in case.
Always used propane in the caravan for cooking and light, wee solid fuel stove for heat. Did well until about 12F when the liquid gas ran out of the lights. Boiling water from the solid stove to thaw the gas pipes out was another wheeze or p*** on them if more convenient.
Is Colemans 'white' something like a cake of Vaseline?
The ignorant pyromaniac one!
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Avgas more like 100-110ish octane petrol.
White spirit not unlike paraffin,have used it in the old Hurricane Lamps without any problems.
White Gas happens to be a cleaner,more refined I spose Unleaded Petrol.
Mind my cookers work perfectly well on petrol siphoned out of the bikes.
Jethro
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Of course we don't really *need* to know as pretty much any liquid fuel will work in a nice varifuel/whisperlite etc etc, of course if you have one of these fussy camping Gaz stoves.... ;)
Only joking lads!! :o
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Of course we don't really *need* to know as pretty much any liquid fuel will work in a nice varifuel/whisperlite etc etc, of course if you have one of these fussy camping Gaz stoves.... ;)
Lots of you have been glad of a cuppa made on it though :-) Hey GC
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HI
Found this thought it might be useful....
http://members.iinet.net.au/~mbuckler/fuel/index.shtml#whitespiritgas
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LOL, I was just about to post the same link.
Coleman fuel is (at the very cheapest) £3.99 a litre here, but US stovies laugh when you tell them that because they pay about £1.00. Apparently there's some substance that car painters use that can be used instead of Coleman fuel and is almost as good (panel wipe?), but I haven't tried it yet.
After the latest stove debacle at Llanthoney I stripped down the stove and found the generator tube to be mucky. When it was reassembled it ran like a blowtorch... which didn't assuage my sense of shame one bit. My mistake (in retrospect) was in trying to run it at simmer temps, which an MSR doesn't like when using petrol and likes even less when you're using paraffin. It did manage supper, half of breakfast and two coffees before going phut though.
Funnily enough I picked up a Gaz stove in its neat blue tin the other day for £1.00. Despite being at least 20 years old it lit and ran beautifully and yes, I can see the advantage of gas during the summer months, it's way easier (right up to the point you run out of fuel).
As for Scott, he used containers with leather washers which allowed the paraffin to 'creep'. This problem was exacerbated by the positioning of the bright red paraffin tins on top of his depots to act as guides. Over the course of the many months they were there they went through countless expansion and contraction cycles as the temperature varied. He found that he had lost up to a third of his fuel stock. Amundsen, on the other hand, had his tins sealed with metal caps that were then soldered into place. Apparently one of his depots was rediscovered in the 80s and the fuel tin was still full.
GC
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As for Scott, he used containers with leather washers which allowed the paraffin to 'creep'. This problem was exacerbated by the positioning of the bright red paraffin tins on top of his depots to act as guides. Over the course of the many months they were there they went through countless expansion and contraction cycles as the temperature varied. He found that he had lost up to a third of his fuel stock. Amundsen, on the other hand, had his tins sealed with metal caps that were then soldered into place. Apparently one of his depots was rediscovered in the 80s and the fuel tin was still full.
GC
Thanks GC, I knew I read something about it.
So, how does one go about soldering a can of petrol closed? A bit of historical research will probably find the guy who did it. He's the one in the pictures with no eyebrows!
Andy
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Set up n+1 cans of petrol with flux ands solder bits round cap. ignite first with trusty paraffin blow torch. When you get back from the Burns unit the others will be scattered around the garden, but soldered closed.
Usless bit of info that probably explains alot department. My Dad as a kid used to see his dad checking the cans of (black market) petrol to see how much was in them - to do this he would hold a match high above the can and look for the reflection in the petrol... My Dad decided to check a can once and put the match close into the can - resulting in a rather large burnt patch outside the house and a very lucky Dad...
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As for Scott, he used containers with leather washers which allowed the paraffin to 'creep'. This problem was exacerbated by the positioning of the bright red paraffin tins on top of his depots to act as guides. Over the course of the many months they were there they went through countless expansion and contraction cycles as the temperature varied. He found that he had lost up to a third of his fuel stock. Amundsen, on the other hand, had his tins sealed with metal caps that were then soldered into place. Apparently one of his depots was rediscovered in the 80s and the fuel tin was still full.
GC
Of course the other thing about Amundsen was he was in and out relatively quickly whereas Scott took so long with manhauling that he got caught by the weather.