Heck your all wrong..... Here is the easiest way to keep warm on those cold frosty early spring or late fall events. Only attend those that are close to home, and day trip it. Show up just before noon so you can check in at registration, and the unit your playing with. Missing both the morning drill, and formations. Do the afternoon battles, visit the sutlers, take the family on a tour and pose for pictures, then head back home to a warm bed. And then repeat it on the next day.
Cris Westphal
Civil War Reenactor
Or get a motel room near by with a near by beer emporium.Originally Posted by Poor Private
Okay, we have had enough sarcasm. Let's please treat his post as a serious request for options to using a propane heater.
Thank you.
Call me stupid, but where in his original post was there a request for other options? I know lots of folks have been reading it that way, but I just don't see it. He seemed content with what he was using and even explained why he felt it was acceptable.
Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net
Well, I read it that way because he also says he's new and that kind of implies a potential openness. Beyond that, sometimes sarcasm comes just too easy to me and I'm trying to work on that.
But I hear your point. We keep talking about the importance of attitude in reenacting, meaning a willingness to learn and try things outside one's comfort zone, and didn't really come across in the initial post.
M. A. Schaffner
Midstream Regressive Complainer
Hallo!
I think we have scared or intimated the lad into silence if not absence...
Answering his question in the light I perceive he asked it in (and I could be wrong):
IMHO, it depends upon how much money one wants to invest in being "comfortable" (that being a highly personal and subjective concept) out of sight behind the closed flaps of a tent. And it depends on one's Mental Picture as to how "near or far" one wants/needs to be from history, Civil War practices, and material culture.
Looking toward modern camping hidden under canvas...
The Modern World offers high tech sleeping bags rated to different temperatures such as 32 degrees or 0 degrees or Minus 30 degrees. There are also reflective "foil" survival "blankets" that wil supplement one's sleeping bag without bulk or weight additional blankets would.
As shared a cot worsens the problem as it has open air space above and below it, and does not really provide that much of a "cushion" or "mattress" to counter the hard and uneven ground. One can use a variety of softness and thickness "foam pads" for one the ground that roll up to a convenient size for transportation and storage.
Perhaps not so oddly enough, the principles of combating "cold" has not changed much- just the form and technology.
Being naked animals, humans need to supplement what they don't have agains the cold to create "dead air' barriers to energy (heat) loss BOTH from radiation as well as convection. What layered clothing does, and what the dry dead air spaces in denser fiber blankets do is "insulate" the body against bleeding off heat to the environment.
And last, going Zen-like, "cold" and "comfortable" are both physical AND mental considerations- and not everyone "feels" cold and confortable in the same way all of the time. However, we Moderns are hindered and hampered by the expectation of a sound full night's sleep in the connditioned comfort of climate controlled houses. IMHO, when one is "outside" with "modern inside" notions and expectations, all too often those expectations are not going to be met.
(But the strange thing is... that for many at the time it is "Why am I doing this?!!! Freezing my arse off. Boy am I stupid or what?!!!" which as time goes by and the event stories get posted and shared that later mutate into Bragging Rights and Fond Memories.
Others' mileage will vary...
CHS
In gleichem Schritt und Tritt, Curt Schmidt
Not a real Civil War reenactor, I only portray one on boards and fora.
I do not portray a Civil War soldier, I merely interpret one.
And I don't see why that's a bad thing. Everybody, at any level of accuracy, has a line they will not cross, though the line may change over time. Or if they crossed it, the hobby would be Not Fun Anymore for them.
I think trying things outside of one's comfort zone is highly overrated, especially if you're happy doing what you're doing. I mean, why try something you know you won't like, just because it makes you uncomfortable?
He just happened to announce where his line was. I remember at mainstream events, reenactors used to do that to me all the time. "Look, here's my hidden cooler. Aren't I clever? Don't I have that problem solved well?" They didn't want to be told how to do without a cooler. Trust me, I found that out. They just wanted you to admire it. It kinda blew the whole concept of "hiding" something, but I was surprised how often that little show-and-tell occurred, both to other reenactors and spectators, and I read the original post as the same kind of thing.
A shame we scared him off.
Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net
The Best way
Cheap Corn moonshine, and a willing pard to "spoon" with.
Frank Perkin
WIG
Alcohol makes you COLDER...dilating the blood vessels in the skin, which brings your body heat closer to the outer parts of your body, nearer to the cold robbing world around you...
Alcohol dehydrates you...and if you drink enough will cause you to get up in the night.....releasing that cocoon of warmth from your layered warming system.... and your pard, who may get PO'd at you for getting up and getting him/her/it cold.
Never give Alcohol during first aid for hypothermia.
RJ Samp
Horniste! Blas das Signal zum Angriffe!
"But in the end, it's the history, stupid. If you can't document it, forget about it. And no amount of 'tomfoolery' can explain away conduct that in the end makes history (and living historians) look stupid and wrong. "
Hallo!
Correct...
But since it alters the brain, one may not feel the cold and just pass out.
And the first one to fall sleep, or black out, does not have to deal with the cold vomit in the blankets or the smell.
CHS
St. Bernards aren't always our Alpine friends...
In gleichem Schritt und Tritt, Curt Schmidt
Not a real Civil War reenactor, I only portray one on boards and fora.
I do not portray a Civil War soldier, I merely interpret one.
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