Wednesday 9 June 2010

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.

13 comments:

  1. Done quite a bit of test work myself so i enjoyed your posting. Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Alan,

    I hadn't seen your blog before, look forward to having a good read.

    ReplyDelete
  3. No probs.
    I hope you find something of interest.

    Comments good or constructively bad are always welcome.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I would agree that wider pots with this stove and its twin sister Monatauk Gnat work better. The results from my experience with the Monatauk Gnat reflect yours, however, I used a full canister and a wide bottom Evernew 900ml pot. As for personal choice I agree completely.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I wanted to give it a try with the smaller of the two pots from the Snow Peak Multi Compact cookset, (5 3/4" diameter) but I was down to the last 10g of gas by then.

    THey are very nicely made though and at the price quite competitive compared to the heavier Optimus Crux Lite (72g/£37.99)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Go well with a MSR Titan Kettle. Thing is with fuel efficiency is the pots. I have a ETA Solo and Jet Boil which have heat exchange pots. 80% efficient vs most pots of 50% or something like that. If someone made a light titanium pot with a exchanger on it and then a 50 g stove to fit it I wonder if we would then have a real efficient system? Who knows. Like the the stove you got there. I must confess to wanting one. Then I have a lot of stoves.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Martin, I have a 1.0l Primus Eta pot which I'll try but when I tested it previously it wasn't much better than a Mity mug when used with gas and actually worse when used with a low output meths stove (Minibull Blackfly). In my experience there isn't enough of a performance advantage to off-set the significant weight penalty.

    http://maceachain.blogspot.com/search/label/ETA%20Power

    ReplyDelete
  8. My ETA pot with the supplied stove is a fast boil. Out performed a Pocket Rocket with a Snow Peak 900. It is faster a bit than the Jetboil. I noticed on the last trip with my mate in Dartmoor. I had a Jetboil and he had a a ETA Solo. He had a brew slightly faster. I wonder about the fact the jets on the stove supplied for the ETA have if I recall slightly smaller jets. It is all about concentrating the flame into the heat exchange I expect. The flame spread on your new stove might not suit the pot. Thing is a heat exchange should help and if they were light and pots designed to marry the stove for max performance we should see performance in the hills and fuel efficiency.

    Example of efficient stove in the field. Bob from BPL.co.uk

    "We say; For one TGO Challenge we took a PCS for the first week to see how it would perform and find out if a100 cart, would as promised. last a full week. In the field the system brought water to the boil very quickly, lit easily in a good breeze, and certainly lasted the 7 days. Even when the cart was getting low, the power coming from the system maintained the boiling speed.

    We brewed and cooked for 2 during this time, so the 1lt pot was almost full at each use. This system is designed to boil fast, which it does. Rather than try to simmer, we made a pot cosy system and once the food was boiled, dropped it over the top and left it for 15 mins, which enabled the dried food we were using to fully reconstitute. Certainly a reliable option if you need food hot and quick!"

    I do like hot and quick and not a lot of gas used. I am not in a hurry to use meths again for cooking in the hills. Gas is back in for me. I will be interested in your results.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I agree that for best performance the stove/pot needs to be designed to work as a system, the MSR Reactor being about the best example as it has a completely different burner type to any other gas stove (most of the others are different only in the actual size of the burner head/jet size)

    Regarding the Jetboil I wasn't impressed with mine and ended up selling it, I found that performance dropped off rapidly once the gas cartridge was less than 1/2 full. The jet size is fixed and when the valve is fully open the flow rate is determined by the internal pressure of the cannister (pressure also drops when the cannister is cold which is one reason why stove performance drops off as the cannister cools) You can hear the difference as the gas roars out of the burner when a new cartridge is fitted but is silent when the cartridge is almost empty even with the valve fully opened. As far as I know the burner has no means to counteract this (MSR claim that the Reactor burner can although they don't say how) so I'm curious about Bob's comment that it can maintain boil speed on an almost empty cannister.

    Unfortunately I can't test that myself as I no longer have the Jetboil but I'd be interested in hearing if you find a performance difference between a full cartridge and an almost empty one.

    In the end though it comes down to using a system that you like for whatever reason, I still prefer meths most of the time as it's lighter but I'd still use gas or Coleman fuel if the situation demanded it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I will. Mine is the new Flash version. I like it and it has been to Dartmoor and Scotland and so far been good. Thing is I realised that what I want is a fast brew. I aint got the patience when I stop at camp to wait long for a hot drink and food. Pick a stove based on what you want from it is the bottom line.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Look forward to the results Martin.

    There were things about the Jetboil that I liked and I can see circumstances where I could use one but really it came down to weight/performance. I need to be careful with the weight as my tent is heavy (relatively speaking)

    I like meths with a cone typoe windshield as I find I can set it up and leave it to do it's own thing while I get everything else prepared, I only add enough fuel to boil the amount of water that I need at the time so it can be left to burn out and the cone makes it very stable. I doubt that I'd use any of the commercial meths stoves though, using meths is such a personal thing that you really have to come up with a design/system that meets your own requirements and what suits one person will almost certainly not suit another.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I think buying this stove.
    The head diameter of burner with pot support folded in.
    I would take that in my new Everenew 900 ml ECA267 (only 100grs) with a 100 cartridge.
    What do you think, is it possible ??

    ReplyDelete
  13. Bonjour Odinus, oui je pense qui est possible, j'emploie le "Tibetan Titanium" pot 900ml avec la cartouche 100 et le Fly ti mais necessite placez la cartouche de son côté. Ceci fait l'abondance de la pièce pour le Fly ti. Le tete diameter est 60mm
    Veuillez m'excuser ne peut pas parler français

    Richard :-)

    ReplyDelete