Has anyone seen
one of these in action?
A friend of mine saw one at one of his friend's place. Apparently this guy has covered a fair stretch of the planet with one of these in tow (the friend of a friend is a photographer).
Would be a nice bit of kit to have in the Foz I reckon.
And it's less than a month to my birthday!
If you didn't get one for your birthday:
I have one and have used it a bit. The basic difference between the Biolite and other wood stoves is that the Biolite has a thermoelectric thingy, in other words, it generates electricity from the heat of the fire and keeps its internal battery charged up as you use it. And it has a fan/blower to push air over the fuel. It is essentially a small forge.
Pluses: You don't need to carry petrol or some type of gas as fuel; you can burn sticks, leaves, pieces of bark, etc. in it. I makes a great deal of heat, as good or better than a propane single burner stove. It doesn't require a lot of fuel and you can adjust the temperature with the fan control. You can use it to charge your phone or any device with a USB connector. Once it's up to temperature it barely smokes, if at all. The flame is hot enough to burn the vapors that make up smoke. It has accessories such as a small grill and a sort of kettle.
Cons: You have to monitor the fuel supply, keep feeding it fuel. One filling isn't enough to boil a liter of water. You need dry fuel but this isn't usually a problem as you can pick up dry stuff along the way and keep it in a sack or whatever. Once it's going well you could use slightly damp fuel but it will smoke. It takes a bit of care/practice to get it going, after all, you're making a fire. Some sort of fire starter is advisable, paper will work, otherwise you end up shaving slivers of wood or whatever to get it started. Not a real problem with a little practice. If there is a fire ban in place, as often happens in the summer in the southwestern US parks and national forests you can't use it.
I stopped using mine because of the fire bans and because monitoring the fuel & feeding more sticks in it required paying more attention than I wanted to early in the morning. Now I use a cheap propane single burner stove that uses gas canisters because it's legal during the fire ban and I'm rarely out long enough to need to carry several canisters, one will last the weekend.
It's good for extended trips so you don't have to carry your fuel and for people who are environmentally conscious. You could travel with it and not have to worry about finding the right kind of fuel in the country you land in since airlines won't let you carry fuel.
