I use INIU 20000mAh Mini Power Bank. Is also small and weights around the same. Don't know why there aren't more of this kind out there
Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank
251–260 of 327 posts
Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Man it drives me crazy when people/products use Ah instead of Wh as a way to specify battery "capability". Without knowing more details about the battery, "20Ah" alone does not convey enough information to determine how long the battery could power a given load for. If I need to power a 100 watt lightbulb, will a 20Ah battery power it for an hour? 10 hours? 10 days? No way to know. Wh is the unit of stored energy, Wh…
Yeah, if you publish Ah, you should also publish voltage. Then it's just Ah * V = Wh.
…just remember V is a rather complicated function of many parameters instead of some fixed value.
Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank
#253Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're taking a shaving device of any sort on your backpacking trip, you've missed a core lesson of the ultra light dudes.
Wouldn't it be logical that ultra light people have no body hair left? And want to keep it so? After all that is lot of grams...
Well it's only useful if you go on such long hikes that the weight of your hair exceeds the weight of your shaver
Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
You put them under your sleeping bag and they make your sleep way warmer than if your sleeping bag is directly on the tent floor. https://www.nemoequipment.com/collections/sleeping-pads
That the purpose of the sleeping pad is characterized as thermal performance and not comfort is proof that I am not capable of the ultralight mindset.
I think a lot of ultralight items are jugdged by measurable properties primarily (which makes the whole subculture very nerd-compatible, I guess). Ofc that doesn't mean you don't care at all for things like comfort.
A solid pad in Ultralight often also doubles in the backpack as a replacement for what would be the frame in traditional backpacks, so it's dual use (or triple, if you consider using it as a sitting mat when taking breaks.
Also, sleeping bags typically compress under your body and lose isolation because of that, so with a pad you can use quilt-style sleeping bags (they wrap around the top and sides but not bottom, which makes them again lighter).
Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
On iOS: Highlight text, select convert, see conversion: https://imgur.com/a/tD9H1t9 But the real solution is for Americans to stop using dumb units.
Holy crap, I never knew that was a thing. Thank you!
If you have a mac as well, you can do these conversions in Spotlight.
Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank
#257You can learn a lot from the ultra light dudes. I replaced all my travel electronics to be powerable from USB-C. This saved me from a lot cables and adapters. Even re-soldered the cable of my electric shaver to use a USB-C PD adapter PCB. As long it's somehow close to the standardized voltages (5/9/12/18/etc.) there will be no problems.
I'm not trying to be gatekeepy or anything, but in 2009 (not so long ago), I did an "ultralight" 40-day on-and-off-road motorcycle trip without any electronics. A few years before that, I did a 10 week "backpacker without a backpack" trip with no electronics. This is still very possible. The weight savings, the "escape from electronics" bonus... It's not nothing.
> in 2009 (not so long ago)
That's 16 years ago...
In some places it's no longer possible to travel without a smartphone. For example, where I live you can't buy a ferry ticket without an app. So if I want to travel to another island with a motorcycle, I'll have to bring a smartphone.
Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank
#258Why your [ultra-light hiker] friend suddenly has [the world's lightest] power bank. I remember Colin Fletcher, years ago, writing in The Complete Walker about trimming the borders off his paper maps to save weight, which seemed like an insane over-optimization to me. But then, I'm not an ultralight hiker. I am impressed folks are getting their loads down to 10 pounds though.
I’ve met people on trail with 5-6 pound baseweights. Crazy world out there.
does that include food and water?
Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not a backpacker, but I presume there is stuff you normally don't use, but don't want to be without. Some amount of first-aid supplies, etc.
For me, a not-particularly-lightweight hiker with a 10kg base weight, that list includes: - a knife - a first-aid kit with some niche stuff like big gauze pads, electrolytes, strapping tape, etc. - quarter of a roll of toilet paper - a compass and whistle - a paper map - spare laces - 3L of water, unless water is guaranteed to be available (2L is more standard) - spare calories in case I'm delayed - emergency beacon…
I assume that quarter of a roll of TP has the cardboard inner taken out
Disclaimer: had to run an multi-stage ultra in the sahara, weighed everything, finished with 1xpacket of carbs+hydration that was right at the bottom of the bag, was upset with myself that I didn't use it for the last day. That's like almost 200 calories I could have used to keep myself warm at night (the desert gets cold at night).
Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank
#260Probably not. The community is always hungry for ways to trim weight, any new offering in the field is interesting, but since the battery is one of the most critical items, well, people tend to be conservative and stick to established models.
Most ultralight folks go light so they can cover more ground while being more comfortable. Experienced ultralighters consider how a weight reduction introduces risk against that goal, rather than simply "lighter is always better". Aka, don't go "stupid light".
An ultralighter is basically guaranteed to use their phone for navigation. A surprise battery failure may cut a trip short and possibly risk their well-being, both of which go against the goal.
It's not recommended to use battery models that haven't been extensively tested because there are conditions in the backcountry that you may not think about or be able to test beforehand, such as performance in cold conditions, whether the IPX rating really holds up, whether it's possible to brick the device accidentally by pressing the wrong button combination, etc.
A common recommendation is the Nitecore nb10000[1] for 10k of battery, and if you want 20k then bring two. (One of the Anker 20k models is also popular.) Bringing two 10ks is ~0.3 oz heavier than one 20k (per manufacturer specs), but it gives you charging parallelism (shortening down your recharging time by N hours, if your trip requires that you recharge midway) and device redundancy, both of which help you move faster with more reliably.
Related, it is also recommended to only use a battery bank that you have personally used for a few full charge cycles beforehand, to smoke out manufacturing defects.
[1]: https://nitecorestore.com/products/nitecore-nb10000-gen-2-qc...
[2]: https://nitecorestore.com/products/nitecore-nb20000-gen-3-du...