Originally Posted by
Danielsa
Hi everybody, first of all I want to thank you all for the multitool answers, it's great to have an opportunity to prepare myself and my gear according to the unbelievably wide experience people have in this forum!
Second, I wish to buy a good stove for my tours, I read a lot of reviews about the optimus Omnifuel stove, the msr whisperlite and the trangia brand. What do you suggest and prefer? The most important abilities are: the stove needs to be able to work with many types of fuel, shouldn't be cleaned regulary and I prefer a light stove. What do you suggest? (other choices are welcome too of course)
The Whisperlite is an okay stove. It does get rather sooty during the priming process and it works well enough. It's slightly lighter than the Omnifuel (410g vs 441g). It's also a bit cheaper ($80 vs $105).
The Omnifuel, however, is a much more versatile stove. It will burn everything the Whisperlite does plus it will use butane canisters if you can find them (Walmart carries them in many stores). Butane is much easier to use than white gas or other liquid fuels because there's no priming and no pumping. Hook up the canister and light it up. No leaky fuel either. For short tours, butane is nearly ideal. A canister lasts me about a week of cooking an evening meal and coffee in the morning. For longer tours, I carry one liquid fuel canister and the pump for the stove. Helmart, again, carries quart size white gas at many stores so that you don't have to buy a gallon of Coleman fuel and have to figure out how to carry it.