Your camp stove

I have quite a few, not as many as @geeves but just ones I have collected over the years. Mainly all white spirits. I have tried the solid fuel tablets but never that keen on them. I have tried a couple of make your own can ones and they were great fun to make. I carry one sometimes to use one as an emergency stove as it all fits in a small billy, fuel, soup, refresh, cup, spoon, and a flint rather than matches in case it gets wet. The only problem I have had with that is that the spark is not hot enough to light it in really cold weather i.e. snow around. Most recently I have been using a small Kovea stove. It is simple and easy to use, the kids can light it, it is quiet and there are 3 different size canisters that I am aware of for different length trips.

The Koveas are all good stoves. The MSR stoves are cheap in USA but not here. Ive mentioned our MSR prices on the stove collectors forum and the eyes of the Americans watered in sympathy. Im not convinced they are any better than Kovea etc. With gas their isnt a huge difference in performance between any of the modern stoves. The wife will use a gas stove but not a hope trying to teach her to use white spirit.

When I was with the MSC, we used to demonstrate all the various outdoor stoves. After seeing the whisperlite demo, the course attendees would say no thanks, we'll stick with the gas cartridges. When I was priming the whisperlite, sometimes newbies in the huts would be horrified that I was some kind of pyromaniac. And I actually run a very small amount into the priming cup compared with most folks.

Gas is certainly easy. One problem Ive struck with the whisperlites when priming is that if you open the valve too much fuel is squirted up into the top part of the burner before it runs back into the cup, which can make for an exciting prime. I have at home primed one of these using a separate eye dropper bottle of meths in the same way as the old 8r and it is the easy trouble free solution except you have to carry the extra few grams. The old 8r style stoves could be primed by warming the tank in your hands so you could dribble a few drops into the cup but most people used the eyedroper of meths. A few would cover the whole base of the stove which did warm the tank quicker but very messy and often fuel would run out setting the bench on fire. Totally unnessecsary

@geeves thank you for the reminder. I remember those, had one when I first started tramping mid sixties. Had to watch out for them overheating as I remember or you had the equivalent of a blast furnace, which made it tricky to get to the off valve.

They didnt really like 8 pint billys on large trips and the big issue with any self pressurizing stove was that the hotter it got the more heat it produced. They had a safety valve but once it was properly hot it would vent fuel vapor right next to the burner. Result if you wernt quick to catch it wasnt pretty. They only had about 2/3 the power of most modern stoves but back then it was enough

My go to stove is a cat can stove that uses meth. I like esbits but lighting is harder. My cat can has never failed me. That said most cooking I do is to just boil water to rehydrate something or make coffee.

A wealth of stove info here http://zenstoves.net/ Or here once its upgrade is complete http://www.spiritburner.com You may have to register to view very much

Currently I either use a Snowpeak Gigapower gas canister stove for trips where temps are above 0°C ("3-season") and for 1-2 people; or a MSR Windpro for larger parties (and larger billies) and in winter. The Windpro has a fuel preheat tube so I can run the gas canister inverted and use the internal propane gas pressure in the canister to feed liquid fuel to the burner. This allows the gas stove to operate well down to about -15°C (preheating the canister is sometimes needed). Just love the speed and convenience of cooking with gas... The gas canisters with the best fuel blend (especially for low temps) are made by Kovea with 30% propane and 70% iso-butane. Available from Gordons in Wellington. The only times I've used a white spirits stove is for cooking for a large group (6+) or melting snow, again for a large group (6+). Agree with @Geeves that meths is the best way to prime white spirit stoves! I use a small squeezy plastic bottle that has a little spout that flips open and closed (originally from the wife's makeup bag). I've had some experience with homemade alcohol stoves and wrote up my initial experiences on a thread in the forums. The alcohol stoves work well provided you accept their limitations and modify your food/cooking habits to suit (just agreeing with @Reverse). I always use a windscreen with whatever cooker I'm using.