Recommendations: Compact, cheap camp stove?

I have quite few stoves, including a MSR WhisperLite and a couple of canister stoves. All nice stoves, but after many years I've gone back to my old Trangia alcohol burner. The simplicity and reliability can't be beat. I've also made soda can alcohol stoves, these are favorites of long distance hikers. Look here:

http://zenstoves.net/Stoves.htm

I don't use the Trangia cookset, just an aluminum tripod to hold it and a homemade windscreen. I use a MSR Titan kettle, and store alcohol in a bottle they sell drinking water in. Hard to get much simpler or lighter.

Plus alcohol stoves make NO noise. It is quite a difference from using a canister or gas stove that roars. Fuel can be bought almost anywhere, auto stores and hardware stores carry alcohol.
 
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Satyr said:
I use a MSR Titan kettle
Click to expand...

I bought one of those from Amazon - nice light kettle.

I also bought a Caldera Cone recently - it's a little pricey (~$30) but it does work as advertised. I tested it with boiling 2 cups of water from 1/2 oz of denatured alcohol and it did indeed boil the water on that small amount of fuel.
You buy the model for the stove you use and the cone is a windscreen + pot stand as well as focusing the heat to the pot. It comes with the stove and a fuel bottle. This is a well designed set up, but when you buy a Caldera Cone for your MSR Ti Kettle you can't then decide to use it with your camping frying pan or a bigger pot.

I'll have to test my Caldera Cone with a couple of other stoves, I'd like to be able to use it with a supercat stove as a backup to the supplied stove.
 
Snow Peak Gigapower butane stove.

You can walk into REI or A16 or Big 5 or WalMart and buy the cannisters off the shelf.

That, or an alcohol Trangia burner.
 
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