Hello everyone

This is my first post on this forum, though I have been a fan of Equipped to Survive for some time.

I'd like to tell you about a couple of equipment failures I had on a recent trip in case it might be of help.

I'm a Brit: I qualified as a Royal Air Force combat survival officer more years ago than I care to remember and I spent a lot of time out of doors with the Territorial Army after retiring from the RAF, so I am reasonably confident in bivouacking and so on.

Time passes and we get soft, so a friend and I decided we would do a little walking in the North Pennines. For those of you in the US who are unfamiliar with our UK hills I would say that, apart from the altitude, they are comparable with the Medicine Bow range, or the Bighorns, both of which I had the pleasure of walking in last year. Anyway, these were summer walks and there was no real problem from the weather.

The problems I had were to do with fire lighting.

The first was that the wind proof 'lifeboat' matches I had taken failed to produce any flame - they just smouldered, producing lots of smoke but emphatically no fire. These were matches from UK ration packs, NATO part number 9920 99 737 1041. I checked the dates on the packages and they were all dated 1995. Beware, therefore - these matches deteriorate with the passage of time.

The second problem was with hexamine solid fuel. I have used this quite happily on exercise for years, but this time I found it amazingly difficult to light. Again, the packs I was using were quite old souvenirs of my soldiering days. My companion is a chemist by profession and he told me that hexamine will absorb water if it is given the chance. That would account for the difficulty in lighting and the spluttering once it was lit. The good news is that it will dry out again, given a warm, dry environment. I suppose the lesson here is to keep your solid fuel in a warm, dry store and keep it in a waterproof bag when you set out.

The final problem was that my 'jet' butane lighter ran out of fuel. I have always felt that the refuelling process is very hit and miss with these - you have no way of knowing whether or not you have achieved a satisfactory refill. And I obviously didn't.

Anyway, we managed satisfactorily because I had also taken a disposable butane lighter and an MSR 'Pocket Rocket', both of which operated flawlessly. In fact, I lit the PR in order to get the hexamine going so that I could use it with the Kelly kettle - a bit of a rigmarole, but illustrative of the value of having backups for backups, I think.

Despite all this, and some questionable weather, we had a brilliant couple of days on what I believe is the best section of the Pennine Way, from Garrigill to the Cow Green reservoir.

The beer at the Langdon Beck pub is excellent!

Hello !
Welcome aboard and thanks for sharing your experience..

Welcome - and a good post illustrating the need for redundancy in important areas like fire lighting.

How do you like your Kelly Kettle?

Vasco,

Welcome! I especially appreciate the bit of info about the hexy being hydrophillic - duly noted, and I will check mine and some others (Scouts) carried in our ready packs.

Regards,

Tom

Welcome, thanks for tip about the Lifeboat matches from the rat. packs. never heard that, I'll have to check some of mine, as that's what in my PSK.

Dave

Put a pin in the Member's Map so I'm not the only on the UK!

I decided a while ago that I didn't trust matches of any description. Hexamine fuel I use a lot. I've found it hard to light if it's windy, but I've never noticed sputtering so I must be keeping it dry. I usually keep in a small ziploc bag inside one of those flat stoves, which is usually packed into a mess tin or similar. It's maybe a point in favour of Trianga meths burners, though (which I am currently experimenting with for camping).

Wolf asked about the Kelly kettle. Well, I think it's a bit specialist. It's very light, but it's bulky. It boils very fast, but getting it going is obviously a bit more problematic than the Pocket Rocket. The beauty of it is the ability to use natural fuel, but that demands patience to get the fire going.

I took it on our recent little trip as something of an experiment and because I have a stack of hexamine, in fact - it works very well with hexy (when kept dry!).

I'm not sure that I will take it again on a light weight bivouacking trip.

Thanks for the reply - I was drawn to it for its use of natural fuel. Normally I use a folding stove with trioxane and a small pot, or a fire with same (where allowed and convenient). It seemed like the Kelly might be more efficiant.

Put a pin in, you said - well, I was impatient with the system and ended up with 2 pins in the same location. So my name appears twice in the list.

WELCOME <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Pete