Hi All-
I've had one of these stoves for a couple of months now, have done some testing, and have made a few mods.
Observations:
1) It has a broad range of flame control from low simmer to fireball, all with a nice blue-colored flame.
2) Due to size and shape of the burner and flame, at high heat the flame hits the bottom of pots and "quenches" as Roger said. When the flame hits the bottom of the pot, it spreads to a pretty big diameter, such that I will not use it with a Jetboil Sol Ti pot because the flame engulfs the heat-exchanger fins at medium heat and above.
3) The burner assembly was glued onto the valve assembly on my stove with something like loctite. You have to break the bond in order to access the jet for service.
4) I'm happy enough with the stove, especially after the mods below, to plan to use this as my primary winter snow melting stove with a 1L Olicamp Heat Exchanger pot. The stove + pot weighs only 8.5 oz (the same as a Jetboil Sol Ti stove+burner). (Before anyone points out the problems with a sit-on-top canister stove in the cold, rest assured that I've used this setup successfully down to -10F with proper techniques — I no longer carry an inverted canister stove for snow melting.) [Caution: "proper techniques" here is critical — don't attempt to use this type of stove in such cold weather otherwise.]
5) The stove is so light that instead of carrying a jet cleaning wire and spare O-rings, I ordered a second one just to keep in my pack as a spare for "mission-critical" use (e.g. Winter snow melting use with no other canister stoves in the group).
6) At "medium" heat, stove efficiency with the 1L HE pot is equivalent to the best stove I had previously tested (Jetboil Sol Ti) within the margin of error of my testing .
Modifications:
1) I ground down the pot supports slightly to reduce their diameter so that they would fit cleanly inside the heat exchanger fins on a 1L Olicamp pot. This does make the stove even less stable than stock, but I don't plan to use it on large-diameter pots anyway.
2) I installed a tiny wad of cotton as a filter inside the jet, as the stove came without any kind of filter. (This increased my piece of mind against clogging for winter/snowmelting use.)
3) I removed the pin holding the valve in place and replaced it with a short length of stainless steel wire that allows me to inspect and service the valve and internal O-ring if needed.
4) I broke loose the glue bond between the burner and valve assemblies to allow access to the jet for maintenance.
Cheers,
Mike
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