combining gear

Lighter backpack equipment: Email: j.p.trotter@uwic.ac.uk

Hello my name is John Trotter. I am a design student at www.uwic.ac.uk/sped Wales UK. I am investigating the possibility of combing backpacking equipment to improve the weight and size.

The items that I have listed below have come up most frequently in all Backpacking/camping lists that I have looked into.

I want to combine 2 or 3 of the items, into one easy to carry pack.

An example of what I want to achieve: Have the light and stove charge of the one type of fuel. The light and stove would fit together in a tube which would protect them. The tube would also serve as a water filter when the light and stove are removed.

1. Which of this equipment is most important to you when backpacking?

1. Camping Lights.
2. Cooking stoves.
3. Water filters.
4. Pots & frying pans.
5. Should there be something else on this list?

The project is at a very early stage and I am looking for an insight and ideas into what backpackers need. Every person it will have a different view. Every comment and suggestion will be of great value to my project.

Comments:

Interesting concept - sort of a "swiss army knife" deal, eh?
I'm gonna think on this one ...

I'd love to see a stove with headlights.

Like the Folkie, I would have to think about this one. My immediate reaction to the SAK (Swiss Army Knife) approach is that multipurpose widgets may do lots of things, but none of them well. The Swiss Army Knife is a prime example of that, as is the Leatherman, and all the imitations/copies of them. On your combination stove and light, such things sort of exist now - Camping Gaz/Bleuet has small stovetops that screw onto their proprietary canisters, and small lantern-tops, a couple of models of each. Primus has the same thing for the standard butane canisters, as does Optimus. At least one of the small butane lantern tops is "mantle-less". True, these are separate tops for the canisters, but many of the multi-tools have interchangeable bits.

Multi-use is all the rage these days in electronics - combination cell phone, MP3 player, camera, video (download movies or shoot your own), games, text message, email, I forget what else my latest cell phone does, but again none of them well, especially the basic phone functions (and this is a Motorola, supposedly one of the leaders in cell phones). Again an example of "lots of functions, none of them well".

Computers are sold these days as combinations of home entertainment centers, photo processors, business tools, and on and on. But the desk-top computer doesn't mate very well with a 60-inch plasma screen - totally different movie experiences.

Chefs have a variety of pots, pans, knives, spoons, forks, ladels, and other tools to prepare meals. Yeah, you can get by with a 1 liter pot and a spork. And the food will get cooked. But the "presentation" leaves a bit to be desired.

Fine wine in a sierra cup? Doesn't work.

On your stove-lantern combo, keep in mind that these don't just burn fuel. The stove needs to produce a wide range of controllable heat, distributed over the pot, while the lantern needs to produce light, with a controllable distribution from a moderately narrow beam to a wide area, without glare. Most fuels (compressed gas, white gas, kerosene, alcohol) burn with a blue, almost invisible flame when producing their heat most efficiently, where the human eye responds best to "white" light, a particular continuous distribution spectrum from blue through red. The wrong spectral distribution, and things look ghastly, or reading gets difficult (reading a map with yellow markings under a yellow sodium vapor light is almost impossible, for example). So lanterns use mantles in which the "ash" glows with a basically "black body" spectrum (the mantle-less ones use a wire mesh for the same thing).

One of the weirdest combination items I have seen is a plastic combination knife-fork-spoon. One end of the handle is a spork (ok, those sort of work), while the other end is a knife. Someone forgot that when you cut something, you often need to hold it down with a fork. A single combination of all doesn't work well at all, plus when you have sauce on the spork end and try to use the knife end, you get the sauce on your hands.

Not saying you can't come up with something. But think in terms of a "killer ap", as they say in the computer world. Something that really fills a need, not a "solution in search of a problem."

Oh, yeah, reminds me of my "dream vehicle"

Outer dimensions of a Mini (the real one, not the current German imitation Min), 1000 mile range, handling of a Formula 1 car, comfort of a Rolls (the ones in the 1950s and 1960s), off-road capability of a Hummer or better yet dune buggy, hauling capacity of a moving van when needed, energy consumption of a Vespa (preferably not petroleum-based, since that will run out before too many more years), styling of the best of the Ferraris, cost of the original VW Beetle ...

Now that's the ultimate multi-tool!

IMHO,the multifunction approach only works for certain types of tools. The SAK works up to a point. I have seen some so thick that they can't be held comfortably in your hand. All this does is make them dangerous. When I was a kid, I had one of those cheap knockoffs with the fake antler bone on the sides with a big spoon and fork that folded out. Not very practical.

I have a multitool for my bike that approaches the limit. It comes apart into two pieces with tools on each half aligned on an axle. (Hard to explain unless you've seen one-it's called The Alien.) It's pretty ingenious, but still not as comfortable to use as a single allen wrench, screwdriver or tire iron.

Ski poles that screw together to make an avalanche probe seem like a good idea; on the other hand, there are several lanterns that run on gas of some kind, but I don't see how you would combine one into a stove, or why you would want to. Those emergency flashlight/radio combos are fairly well thought out-some of them anyway-and their uses lend themselves to combining functions into one unit. I'd never carry one backpacking though. My little headlamp is much better for backpacking and radios or IPods can be very tiny on their own.

Making things lighter, smaller and cheaper seems more efficient that trying to create a multi-use item that does nothing particularly well.

BTW, one ingenious stove I saw the other day was a folding wood stove made by Titanium Goat-it looks like a little barrel-you take off the end caps and roll up the center-the flue is in several pieces. Not superlight, but pretty close. You can cook on it too with the pot they have for it. It weighs about 2 lbs. Pretty clever.
http://www.titaniumgoat.com/cstove.html