So let's talk about gear....

[Phil]

Has anybody used one of the Asian offerings in aluminum pots with a heat exchanger? Especially used with a Pocket Rocket or Soto canister stove, ie: does the pot base sit right and stable, safe with the stove's supports...? I sent the kid my cooking rig for a trip in AZ, and I don't think he's planning on giving it back, so I'm trying to put together a new one and throw a little more technology at it.

[balzaccom]

I haven't tried one of those yet, Phil. But I have tried loaning stuff to my kids and not getting it back...

That gets better as they get older.

[Phil]

...And because I know that all 448 of you that have visited this thread are waiting with bated breath to know how my cooking rig ended up coming together...

So I went with a Soto Windmaster OD-1RXN stove and a Fire Maple K2 Feast 1.5L pot with a heat exchanger. I wanted the bigger pot for 2 people. I also tried the Jetboil 1.5L Ceramic and the Bulin 1.5L, but the pot supports on the Soto and the base of the pot weren't even close to fitting right and were ridiculously unstable. I'm going to test fuel use and boil times and get back to everyone so that they have something to look forward to in these times of plague. But, for all this, still my favorite combo is my old Brunton Vesta stove (if you can find one, buy it!) and either a Snow Peak Trek 900 or 1400.

[AlmostThere]

I got a remote canister Olicamp to complement my Snow Peak Giga (13 years old and still cooking) - both are 3 oz and still going. The Olicamp works fine with small skillets to fry fish or boil water, and I can add a windscreen. Either works with the Primus heat exchanger pot that went with the Primus stove I was given.

[Phil]

Yeah, the old Snowpeak Litemax and the 1400 are what the kid owns now...

In terms of trying to give all these new people just getting into backpacking something useful to take away from this, piggybacked canister stoves have their place, but they do all tend to sit very high and have a narrow footprint, making them unstable, even with a canister stand. The one big thing though is that when you get to higher altitudes and colder temps isobutane mixtures don't burn well because the propane component doesn't hit its boiling point and vaporize, so you end up with canisters that contain only propane because it won't/can't burn efficiently/at all under those conditions. Having a remote canister adds weight to the stove, but it also allows you to invert it and burn off 100% of the fuel mixture and avoid having to sometimes carry a second full canister to compensate for the 1/3 full now situationally useless canister. Many a hot meal and cup of coffee has been saved, and this along with the huge pot capacity is why I always loved my Brunton. Even if you have something like a Jetboil, flip it upside down and see what happens with performance when you feed the fuel in liquid form and let the stove jet do the atomizing.

[Phil]

The Olicamp works fine with small skillets to fry fish or boil water, and I can add a windscreen.

I did experiment with the Soto a bit. I fired it up and put it 4 feet in front of a 24" industrial fan set on high without a windscreen and it stayed lit. Actually pretty amazing.