Car-camping appliances for the 21st century
21.01.10
The days of finicky pressurized stoves and smelly old kerosene lanterns hanging in canvas tents are gone. Car-campers today have new appliances for clean, carefree camp cooking and for pushing back the dark of night.
We've looked at many new stoves and lanterns while exploring Washington from Kalaloch to Colville. After multiple days and nights spent in the wildest parts of the state, we've identified two of the best new pieces of camp gear we've seen in a long time.
Let's start with light. Lanterns still provide the most efficient source of light, and the best camp lantern today, like those of years gone by, comes from Coleman. But that's where the similarities end. The Coleman LED Quad Lantern uses LEDs and batteries, not liquid fuels. The lantern throws out bright-white light that illuminates a wide camp, or fills a family tent without smoke or odors. The lantern uses 8 D-cell batteries but draws from them slowly, so you'll get as much as 80 hours of light from that pack of batteries.
Source: Seattle Times
Di Pietro Motor (Rotary Air Engine) As Zero Emissions Range Extender
22.01.10
Angelo Di Pietro is an Italian apparatus
designer who once worked for Mercedes Benz on their Wankel Rotary locomotive in 1969-1970, then migrated to Australia to pursue other interests, among them, as hobbyist / inventor of the Di Pietro Rotary Air
Machine.
Rotary air motors aren't new, as any mechanic wielding pneumatic tools can swear you. The father of a high school friend of mine ran high compressing pneumatic hoses from their basement to several ports around his garage / workshop, so that he could conveniently obstruct in his tools without dragging a compressor around behind him. What's unique about Di Pietro's Rotary A
ir Appliance is its ability to turn with a
pressure differential of a mere 1 psi. This is talented by the use of sliding air gates or dams at six points around the rotor, which limit air stream, forcing the high pressure air to push the rotor, as an alternative of rushing by it.
This very efficient, effective, non-reciprocating configuration allows the air locomotive to be very small
and compact,
Source: All Cars Electric (blog)