Coleman - Now is the time!

Coleman Malaysia has officially opened at Sunway Pyramid in the second week of April 2016. This marks the end of UFL who was the official distributor of Coleman products here for many many years. 

Unfortunately, in this case a new distributor seems to mean higher prices for the same products. 

If you are a gear snob,  Coleman is not exactly the brand you'd associate yourself for sexy ultra-light hiking gear but they do make some great products for casual car camping and picnic. So now is the time to pick up some great deals on excess UFL stocks still floating in the market. In some cases you stand to save in excess of 40%. For example, today there are 2 kinds of coolers sold under the Coleman brand - one is the lower priced made in China coolers (tumblers and the sort) and their Made in USA coolers - which unless you are comparing to Esky - are some of the best in the business. 

These are some of the stuffs we picked up recently.  To be fair, we will only post prices WE PAID. So if you walk into a Coleman dealer post UFL days, you can compare the prices and be the judge yourself.

Once UFL supplies dry out, expect to pay a lot more. The time is now! 

Made in USA Xtreme 5 Day 50 Quart Cooler

Price paid RM390.00

Lumbar Quattro director's chair for the heavyweight 200lb camper!

Price paid RM 155.00

SOTO Pocket Torch

Date acquired Feb 2015. Price Yen980 which at that time translated to about RM30.00.

This won an award some years back. Having dabbled with a couple of pocket torches which are fueled by gas and found that all do their job but the drawback is having to buy gas refill  (those red canisters which are used to refill lighters) - which is all fine and good when you're at home - different story when you're on the road.

Now you have all the benefits of a portable flame torch with easily found tuck shop lighters. Easily found anywhere around the world.

Note that the SOTO has been designed to be used with a lighter whose dimension is different (longer) from what we find in Malaysia. Some improvisation is required when the provided lighter runs out of fuel. Check out the pic below on how.

Verdict 5/5. Essential camping gear to get that fire / barbie / mozzie coil going.

Portable flame torch

Nice clean blue flame

Alternative RM1.10 Aladdin lighter. Use a half layer cotton tissue to pad the bottom of SOTO. The shorter Aladdin will now be a perfect fit.

Upping the Stakes - mini review

If you had dabbled with your Dad's tent when you were young, you'd be acquainted with the traditional steel tent pegs. They are sturdy and heavy that the joke was it can be used to nail a vampire behind its head to kill it. Tents found at Tesco, Aeon invariably come packed with these. And they are fine - long, robust and heavy. They do the job, you can hammer them in any kind of soil, even tough, rocked filled hard packed soil. Just bang it in! Sometimes they bend but it's steel - can always bend it back like Beckham.

Weight : >20grams per generic piece. In each tent bundle, they will often give you 10 stakes (10x20gm = 200gms), but for this comparo I will use 8 = 160gms

In Malaysia, there are some alternatives for those wanting to shave weight off their backpacks. Introducing the MSR Mini Groundhogs (RM11.00/pc), MSR Carbon (RM20/pc) and generic aluminium (RM7/pc) (2013 prices).

From top to bottom : MSR Mini Groundhog, MSR Carbon, Generic aluminium

As expected the carbon stake weighs in at only 5gm per piece

MSR Mini Groundhogs is not too shabby clocking in at 9gms

Generic aluminium @ 13gms including cordage.

 

Weigh-In (8 stakes)

Using steel pegs as the benchmark @ 160gms (RM0.00 - they come free)

1. MSR Carbon = 40gms (less 120gms, 75% weight savings) @RM160.00

2. MSR Mini Hedgehog = 72gms (less 88gms, 55% savings)  @RM88.00

3. Generic aluminium = 104 gms (less 56gms, 35% savings)  @RM64.00

I have used the carbon stakes and honestly, I do not like them. By their very design, you need to stake it in at an acute angle to prevent your guy lines from slipping. You could make a simple knot but that's just too much work.

The Hedgehog and generic aluminium : honestly not much in between them. They are strong, sturdy and can be pegged into any soil. Hedgehog has a 3 fin design vs 2 of the generic. The only problem these two have is when staking into soil that has pebbles or rock underneath. Whereas the traditional steel pegs can easily circumnavigate around the rocks with a little bit of force, it is not so easy with these two. You may have to adjust your staking points a few times.

Both have notches, so your guy lines can be snared by them easily. Unlike the carbon stakes.

My choice? The hedgehog, for its 3 fin design, ultralight and being super strong. The generic is fine but you don't really need a peg that big or long in most cases. At least I havent personally found a need to have a stake as long. When you are going for ultralight, the minimalist design of hedgehog fits the bill and does the job with aplomb.

Note! The hedgehogs are shiny beautiful out of showroom - but after first use, they become smudgy and scratchy. The hedgehogs comes standard with any MSR tents - they will give you 6. You really need 8 to be safe, so buy another two separately.

OP Series Mininet - expand your backpack storage by 18 L!

There will be times when you need more space out of your backpack to stow more gear and supplies. One common way is to make use of straps or bungee cords - often this is limited to the location and number of anchor points on the backpack that you can use.

When it's full, it means Full Stop

OP Series Mininet hopes to solve this very problem. It's simple yet ingenious solution. You can attach the hooking points ANYWHERE on your backpack without causing any damage or tearing the fabric of the bag - and create an additional 18L of space.

The magic lies in the custom center ring - sufficient for fabric to pass through

Insert the custom center ring anywhere INSIDE the backpack

Attach the carabiner on the OUTSIDE

The results? This. You can even use this for any imaginable bag possible and not limited to just backpacks. The net adds 12in x 12in coverage on the bag and yields an additional 18L space with cords that have a tensile strength of 300lbs.

Price paid RM90 (2014).

Fitbit Flex Reviewed

Purchased this in Perth for under RM400. A health band was something that was never on my radar but I spent all of 1 hour before deciding to buy it.

First things first : why did I not buy the Garmin Vivofit instead? It has a nice display, 1 year battery life, connectivity to Garmin Connect. Only thing going for Flex which has no display is the Battlestar Galactica Cylon blinking lights. Because I would look like a dork wearing two watches : unless I am willing to just wear the Vivofit to work and leave the other watch at home. To wear watches on both hands, IMO, looks dorky - and would elicit too many questions from work colleagues.

Plus 1# - understated and not attention grabbing.

 

Activity for Larian Gegar 2014 - the run started at 7:30 am

Sleep analysis - sound asleep like a beruang

 

Minus 1# - Battery life : needs to be recharged every 5 days! You can easily forget to do this - or happen to not have the proprietary charging cradle handy. I'd leave the charger at the office or a place where you spend the most time during the week. 

Plus 2# - all fitness bands do not tout having 99.99% accuracy and uses oblique words like "representative", "guide" or "reference" but never "accurate". Because it is not. It calculates based on motion - despite their best algorithms to distinguish between movements by walking or movements when sitting down - it is not a perfect science. However! After tweaking the stride length settings, I found that I could get the calculation near the ballpark. If you look at the summary of Larian Gegar 2014 during the morning session, it recorded a distance of 13+km. The run itself was 10km and add the milling around at the start finish line, the warm up, walking from carpark to race site  - I'd say that is pretty close to being accurate!

Minus 2# and Plus 3# - after 5 months of having it - I would confess that it is rather faddish. I no longer diligently sync the unit every day nor do I key in my food intake anymore. In a word - it is pretty much forgotten. For big activities like hiking or races, I have my Fenix which can make the Fitbit rather redundant. Until my recent 8 day trip overseas. Switching GPS on for Fenix would do little since I would be in and out of subway stations and shopping complexes. That was when Fitbit came into its own : the logs gave me a nice overview of my entire trip - and I could corroborate certain time of the day as being "Oh this was that long walk at the Arishiyama Bamboo Grove .." and I could determine with reasonable certainty that on average I was walking 8.95kms per day in Japan! 

Which is why - the Fitbit still has a place on my wrist till today.

Price paid (RM380)

Life With Garmin VIRB Elite - Mini Review

Qualification:
This is a private purchase and not a sponsored item by Garmin. What I purchased was quite a lot - it was the Garmin Virb Elite and most of the mounting accessories - including the shoulder harness.

You can read detailed reviews elsewhere and I would not try to repeat the same stuffs covered by other reviewers. There is an outstanding review here by DC Rainmaker. Check it out. The reviews out there will tell you it has built-in GPS, accelerometer, a lo-res display screen and connectivity with other Garmin devices. I will share with you how the unit has performed for the past month or so I have had it.

The tempe sensor is optional. Got it online for USD$29.

Conclusion : The Short End of It: 

Virb Elite DOES NOT produce the best video quality out there but as an overall complete package with enhanced features, it is HARD TO BEAT. The low down is : it all boils down to Virb Elite vs Sony HDR-AS30V vs GoPro Hero 3+. I am not a videographer nor a movie maker where perfect image (color rendition etc) is a must. All I want is decent footage with overlaid GPS data. You can fine pick picture quality all day between the 3 units but for me, the clincher is that the Virb can talk to other Garmin devices and accessories. And because it does so - it opens up new features and data fields that neither the Sony nor the GoPro has. You can tell me Hero 3+ renders color more beautifully and that Sony does better low-light recording than the Virb and I simply don't care. You will understand why as you read below.


KEYWORDS on things I like about it : GPS, remote connectivity, display, When Moving Mode, sensors, data overlays, TimeLapse mode.

Out of the Box

First the bad : it came with Firmware 3.0. And honestly it was a real pain. The unit freezed up on different occasions. When I thought the unit was recording, it actually was not and there were footage which were simply not recorded. For the first 3 days, I felt I really had an expensive lemon in my hand. The WebUpdater could not detect FW3.0 and it tells me that my FW is uptodate. It was not - FW 3.70 was already posted by Garmin. I had to manually update the Elite by finding the physical update file of 3.70 on the  internet and putting it on the SD card.

The good - the manual update went smoothly and the unit since update has performed flawlessly for the past month. No more freezes.

Life with Virb Elite 

Garmin:"We chose white so that you can find it easily if it falls in the mud."

Virb Elite comes only in white and you can see why white is a bad choice! It is an action cam, where the photographer you know, may come into contact with dirt, water, mud .. or did that escape Garmin's designers? For a unit which has not spend more than 40 days out of the box, it looks like it has spent life outdoors for the past 2 years. The Garmin lettering is not in black - that is a botched experiment of using Black Plastidip spray ..

Customisable everything with all the GPS and sensor data!

Display

Its a simple lo-res VGA display that tells you all you need to know : how the video is being framed, what it is recording and playback. It is not backlit so you won't be able to use it in darkness but for most other occassions, it is mighty fine enough for you to even select and delete clips that you do not like when you are out doing your activities. After living with GoPro Hero 1 for many years, the display is a big leap in terms of assisting video composition as well as excising useless clips on the fly.

The display also has a GPS style dash - which shows you the speed and sensor data. For example, it will draw an elevation profile of your location - so if you have the unit turned on for the past 1 hour, the graph will show the elevation profile for the past 1 hour. Ditto for temperature readings. It also shows the G readings in real-time. All these data are displayed live together with a Min / Max reading. Very nice.

GPS

Virb writes on the SD card the .mp4 video files, .gpx files and .fit files.Presumably Fit files come into play when you pair the Virb with, say, a heart rate monitor or a tempe sensor. All the GPS and sensor data can be put into good use when you edit the videos using Virb Edit.

Apart from the conventional continuous recording, it can also record "When Moving" mode. So when the vehicle stops - say at a traffic jam or a traffic light - the recording stops. It restarts automatically when the car moves again. On this mode, as you pull out of the garage, it will automatically start recording, even though the Record button is in the OFF position. It cuts out a lot of useless motionless footage. It also has a SKI Mode which only records when the camera detects you are going downhill. If you are going uphill, the recording stops. MTBr downhillers may find this function useful.

Garmin connectivity and sensors!

My Montana 650, Garmin Fenix watch can remotely operate the Virb Elite. The Android app allows my Samsung Note 8 to remotely operate the camera too. You even have a nice preview of what the camera is seeing with your Note 8. But once the shutter is triggered, live-view is disabled (you see a blank screen on your tablet).

If you are a Montana user - there is another plus point - Virb uses the same batteries! So whilst you plug in the Montana in the DC charger of the car, you can use the Virb for (it says 3 hours but I have consistently got 2++) and the swap the batteries with the Montana. Rinse and repeat. For a long journey, you basically have a continuous supply of batteries :)

This connectivity enables you can mount the camera on the roof of the car and use your Fenix watch or Montana GPS whilst driving the car to remotely operate the cam. Wonderful. The Fenix will even tell you how long it has been recording. Superb! I have a GoPro Hero 1 - how may times do I have to check and double check if I am recording or if the unit is on? TOO MANY! No reaching out to the unit to fiddle with it every time you can to start and stop recording.

It talks to the Tempe, HRM, cadence and power meters. And you can overlay all these data on your video. Seriously do you need more justification? :)

Tempe readings and graph for the last 5 mins

PLEASE NOTE THAT NONE of official Virb Garmin mounts can be mounted on the external surface of the car (short of gluing it). For this job, I use RAM Mount - the suction is rock solid that it ain't gonna fly off even if I mount it on the roof and going at 150mph.

RAM mounts are the bees knees of all mounts out there

Video Recordings & Camera

With a 64GB SD card, I am able to record some 6hrs 30+ mins at 1080p 30fps. The  max file size per video is approx 3.5GB+ before Virb splits and create another file is the recording exceeds the limit. So if your footage is 12GB long, then you may end up with 4 separate video files.

The Time Lapse mode is super neat. It takes 16MP pictures at selected intervals of 0.5 secs, 1 sec, 2 secs, 5 secs, 1 minute etc. The moment you stop recording, Virb will stitch all the pictures into a videoclip. Great to film mundane things which would seem boring otherwise- like eating, setting up bike gear or better yet : sunrise or sunset. For the latter two, you should plug the camera into an AC outlet if you intend to do time lapse for many hours. On time lapse mode with 64GB, you can record more than 99+hrs.

Time Lapse and 1080p are the only 2 modes I normally use. It has a wide-angle 16MP camera. The performance is actually pretty good - even in low light. 

My personal impression is that this camera does admirable night recordings and I am honestly impressed. I read that Sony betters Virb but since Sony cannot talk to the Tempe, HRM, cadence sensors, I did not particularly care :)

Virb Elite on FW3.70 performed flawlessly whilst it traveled the length and breadth of Japan in 8 days - including 2 days in the rain and a waterpark. 

Photo mode. Night shot. Not bad eh?

Sungai Besi Toll Plaza

Virb Edit

Virb Edit - this software is far from the best out there, but it gets the job done for simple editing.

Sleeprite Cot Quick Review

Official site of Sleeprite Cot.

My current camping accomodation is Therm-A-Rest Scout . I have the Regular 183 cms pad which weighs 680 gms and can fit quite easily in my backpack. It is a great self-inflating sleeping pad and it has seen action at places like Mossy Forest, Bako National Park, Kem Baha, Broga, Gunung Datuk. It has given me many comfortable night's sleep. Even on uneven rock surfaces, it is so darn comfortable to sleep on and your body warmth actually heats the pad up. My only complain if any is its weight! Budget does not permit me to buy the more expensive and lighter pads!


I picked up the Sleeprite Cot  for days when I (may!) do car-camping or beach camping WHEN WEIGHT DOES NOT matter. It comes in a small portable pouch which together with all its trappings clocks at 2.87 kgs. 

To put things in perspective - folding aluminium camping beds as we know it like this weighs 6+kgs, is bulky and not exactly portable without some huffing and puffing but costs in the range of RM150-200.00. The other big difference is that these sit much higher above ground : we're talking in feet. For Sleeprite Cot (or LuxuryLite for that matter), they sit considerably lower to the ground : we're talking in inches here. The idea is that your body is off the ground - whether it is 2 feet or 6 inches should not matter in reality since you are already isolated from the ground environment.

Dimensions : the cot sits 175mm above ground (no load), is 1960mm in length, and 740mm in width. Basically it can sleep a 6 footer more than comfortably. Once you are on it, the cot fabric will sag down much closer to the ground - so depending on where your bum is located in relation to the support frames - in my case, the lowest point was 70mm off the ground. 

Sleeprite Cot at 2.87kg is much lighter in a compact package compared to traditional camp beds. But if you wanna go crazy, there is always the Therm-A-Rest LuxuryLite Mesh Cot - which in Kuala Lumpur is being sold at RM999 but weighs a waifly 1.47kg only. But let me be the sour grape and tell you that I have molested the LuxuryLite before - it is darn crazy light BUT, the durability of the oval foot packs of the bow-frame is honestly questionable. It is made of some kind of light plastic, which looks and feels fragile. I have read a review where a user claims to break the foot on its first use - in his living room!

The Sleeprite has foot packs made of solid aluminium and is rated to carry up to 300lbs.

Everything is shock-corded : so no pieces are liable to be misplaced or dropped. The aluminium poles are not your ordinary heavy generic tent poles - they are lightweight and is similar to the poles used by the MSR tents. Handsome and light. I like. And the red color : very pretty. Very MSR Hubba Hubba NX .. ahem ..

The 6 support frames are not evenly spread out - 4 of them are bunched more closely together where most of your body weight is : head, upper torso and bum. So note the White Arrow which tells you which way your head should be. Sleep the other way and your body weight may not be properly distributed - which I assume can break the frame. Who knows?

So how easy is it to setup and dismantle? Actually very easy. I fumbled in the first try but by the second and subsequent attempts, I can get it up quickly in a leisurely 2 minutes. Bringing it down is even faster. My tip is:
1. use the ground as leverage for setup and dismantling.
2. fix the support frames on either end of the cot FIRST, before doing the intermediate ones.
3. slot the frame on the left side of the cot, stand the cot sideways on the left and press down to slot the frame on the right side of the cot (which is elevated). The leverage by pushing the frame down enables you to easily bend the frame to ease slotting.

SLEEP TEST

Sedap siol! The bed is firm, there is sagging but your torso doesn't ball up like it would when in a hammock. The fabric is held taut and gives just a little when your full weight it on it. It makes noise when you move : if you are a tosser-turner, you might piss off the guy sleeping next to you. It is not very noisy but it is audible.

POTENTIAL SETUPS

1. When your wife gives birth and you can only get a Single Room. An instant bed!

2. Day trip / picnics for an afternoon siesta by the beach.
3. Motorbike camping - what is 2.8kg in the panniers dude?!
4. A non-fussy sleeper guest drops by the house
5. Watch World Cup when the rest of the sofa is already taken up by other family members.
6. Overnight camping gets tricky:
(a) setup a flysheet above you; or
(b) have a very big tent

For Malaysian climate, 6(a) is very very doable and would be much preferred.

Last question : would I hike up a mountain with it? Answer : NO. My Hubba Hubba (2.04kg) with the Gear Loft (85gms)and  and Footprint (140gms) is considerably lighter, can sleep 2 comfortably, has an ace view of the stars minus the insects and mozzies and keeps me out of the elements.

Price paid RM340.00 (2014)

Living with : The MSR Hubba Hubba Review

This is my second Hubba Hubba - after the first one was stolen. I like the tent so much that I'd buy this again if I have to.

Keywords of things I like about it: lightweight everything, build quality, view, packs very compactly

At first glance, the Hubba Hubba looks like a variation of the dome tent but it is far from it. Hubba Hubba comes with a single pole design - every single piece of the entire pole structure is shock-corded together as a single unified piece. The pole itself is amazingly ultralight - most people when they handle the pole for the first time and get awestruck by its light weight - will just blink the eye and buy the tent. :) It is called DAC Featherlite and weight probably only 1/10 of the normal weight of the traditional 2 piece aluminium dome tent poles. It is that amazing.

Before I bought this tent, I shortlisted a few others - an orange Marmot being one of them which was in the same price range as the Hubba Hubba. I tested the Marmot in a showroom in Singapore - actually was very impressed with the entire package until I saw the tent spikes. For an ultralight tent which went to great pains to save weight - it uses the traditional heavy as lead steel tent spikes. Locals would call those Paku Pontianak. FAIL.

The beautiful MiniGroundhog stakes

MSR made no such mistakes as it went all the way right down to the ultralight and beautiful MiniGroundhog stakes - which looks the business and weighs next to nothing. And they even supply you with insufficient stakes! For this iteration of Hubba Hubba, it came with only 4 stakes - when ideally you need 6 minimum to fully guy the tent in strong wind conditions. One stake costs RM11 so you should grab at least 2 extra.

My recommendation is to buy the tent with the Hubba Hubba Footprint

The Footprint enables me to setup the tent pretty much anywhere I want - protects the tent from rough surfaces underneath and allows me to setup JUST the rainfly without the tent. There are some occasions when you just need the shelter without the tent - so you raise the poles using the footprint and then raise the rainfly. The practical advantage is that when it suddenly rains, you can quickly layout the footprint, raise the rainfly first to get out of the rain, and only then raise the tent underneath. You are dry and the tent is dry : this is one ability which most tent systems do not have.

Full mesh 360 degree view if you remove the rainfly

The tent is almost entirely full-mesh. For hot nights, you can fold the rainfly away and have a awesome view of the sky. The interior is spacious - you can sit up with no problems of hitting the roof of the tent and put Therm-A-Rest side by side. There is now a new version of this tent called  Hubba Hubba NX - it has shaved some 500 gms further making it one heckuva UL tent. But I haven't upgraded .. because of its weight saving improvements, the tent is no longer 360 degree full-mesh. It has side walls and the view is impaired. View or weight savings? 500 gms vs 360 degree views?

NO TENT - Only the rainfly is raised - you can configure shade coverage however you want : half, quarter etc.

Vestibule for gear storage and light cooking away from the wind and elements.

I found the MSR Gear Loft useful : I store my handphone, wallet, watch, keys - and you can use it to put a small light to illuminate the tent.

IN THE ELEMENTS

The coldest I camped was 11 deg - there was condensation outside the tent but it did not get into the tent. I have camped it in extreme high winds - at the time when I didn't have enough stakes. It felt like 20-25kmh winds but with proper guying, the tent stayed up all night. Rain? No problem absolutely.

Price Paid : RM1200.00 for the tent only (2011)