GoSystem Fly ti, Worlds Lightest Gas Stove?

I almost always use a meths stove now, in fact I've only used gas once in almost a year but I was drawn to a stove I saw late last year on the Fire Maple website. The Fire Maple FMS 116T looked like a very nice design, almost identical to the Optimus cartridge mounted stoves but made from titanium and weighing only 48g. I didn't think I'd have a chance to get one but as it happens GoSystem are now selling what appears to be the same stove under the name Fly Ti, they also have a folding head version, the Scion which looks identical to the FMS 109 (again similar to the Optimus folding stove) but unlike the FMS 116T it isn't made using titanium and weighs 90g (It appears that some Fire Maple stoves are also available branded as Vango, see here)



I ordered the Fly ti from AOS Banbury and it arrived today, cost including postage was £30.18. It came nicely packed in a stiff card box but doesn't come with a carrying pouch/case, that doesn't bother me anyway. The stove weighs 47g on my digital scales and is very well finished.



The burner head is quite large and with the pot supports folded out should provide a stable platform for larger diameter pots than my usual Mity mug size pots. The head diameter means that it isn't quite as compact as my C-3 Mini stove but theres plenty of room for both stove and a 100 size gas cartridge in a Mity mug with enough room for a few extra items.







Of course the important thing is performance but I need to point out that I didn't have a new 100 cartridge to test the stove. The best cartridge I had weighed 139g which means there was only 39g gas left, in other words it's only about 1/3rd full and in my experience performance drops off rapidly once the cartridge is less than half full. With that in mind I set the stove up outside and gave it a try, the figures are as follows,



Ambient Temp - 15°C light breeze
Water Temp - 16.2 Deg°C
Cartridge Weight Start - 139g
Boil Time 99 °c - 4.18 mins
Cartridge Weight End - 128g

I was using a basic foil windshield so in short it used 11g of gas and took 4 mins 18 secs to bring 500ml to 99°c which isn't exactly a stellar performance. Obviously I'll need to try it again with a new cartridge to be able to compare it directly with my C-3 Mini stove but I suspect that it may perform better with a wider pot.

In the end my C-3 stove cost around £12, weighs 89g with the pot supports cut down and the piezo igniter removed, is slightly more compact and the performance is about the same as most other cartridge mounted stoves. It really comes down to how important the 40g weight saving is and of course how it performs on a full cartridge although I suspect it won't perform any better than the C-3 anyway.