A Swedish Trangia Burner and a German Tatonka burner stand arrived today - time to test this alcohol stove and compare it with my previous Triad Titanium alcohol stove test attempt. Both the Trangia burner and Tatonka burner cost around £14.10 or about $22.50 from Amazon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tatonka-Stainles...mp;sr=8-2-fkmr1

Time for another test.

The Trangia Burner is well known and construction is from brass whilst the Tatonka burner stand is manufactured from Stainless Steel. Both the Trangia burner and Tatonka burner stand weighed in aroun 205 grams, so the combination is no lightweight. A homemade Titanium sheet wind shield adds around another 40 grams for a total approaching around 250 grams without including the fuel weight, so this combination is no where near a lightweight stove for an alcohol burning stove when compared to the Triad Titanium stove for example. The main other difference between the Triad and the Trangia/Tatonka setup is that the Trangia/Tatonka actually works to what I consider an acceptable stove solution.

The Kettle I used in the test was an MSR Stainless Steel Kettle (also known as the MSR teapot), which is pretty robust and has a reasonable capacity of around 1 litre.



Trangia burner, Tatonka Burner Stand, MSR Teapot & Titanium Windshield.

Preparing the Trangia stove was very simple, first assemble the Tatonka Burner Stand, then pour 45ml into the centre of the Trangia burner (this was much much easier than the previous Triad Stove and could even accomplished in low light moonlight conditions, something that is almost impossible with the extremely fiddly Triad burner) then drop the Trangia into the Tatonka stand. Lighting the Trangia burner was simplicity itself compared to the Triad as there was no priming required using Hexamine or Gel fuel. Even with the Trangia burner effectly sitting in some snow the Trangia took hold without any further intervention. The Trangia jets then began to come alive after around 2-3 minutes in the colder conditions than the last attempt with the Triad Stove. The temperature was around -5 to -6 C with slight wind gusting to around 5-10 mph.

The Trangia/Tatonka combo was then able to boil around 500 ml of cold water in around 14 minutes (from first lighting the Trangia burner). Around 300ml was used to make a cup of Coffee Latte and the rest of the 500 ml from the 1 litre water bottle was added to the MSR Tea pot. The 700ml boiled around the 23-24 minute mark or about 10 minutes later from the first 500 ml being boiled.



Here is a another little video showing the Trangia well alight.

http://www.amfearliathmor.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/CIMG0189.avi

The Trangia went out about the 26 minute mark and was able to boil a litre of water in around 22-23 minutes in reasonably difficult sub zero conditions.

Overall the differences between the Trangia/Tatonka setup and the Triad Titanium were light and day.

The Trangia/Tatonka setup was much more stable than the Triad Titanium and can take a wider range of pots, pans and kettles.

The Trangia burner is also much easier to light and much more difficult to extinguish in windy conditions. i.e. the gust of wind at the end of the little video would have surely blown out the Triad stove.

The Trangia has very little fuel wastage compared to the Triad as virtually all the fuel is usable, with the triad having excessive fuel spillage and the difficulty of getting the stove to light and remain alight in windy conditions. The Trangia also comes with a fuel cap to store the reminder of unused fuel in the burner together with a simmer ring.

Overall this was much more impressive demonstration of an alcohol stove setup, but again in really difficult conditions I still would have to go with a gas stove as the weight differences are now very slight but the Gas stove (with the appropriate low temperature isobutane/propane mixture) will still have the advantage in boil time and a gas stove can be used inside a tent without much worry as to the safety issues when compared to any alcohol stove.