Private pilots flying to Alaska must to care a survival kit, including means to start a fire. This could turn into a huge rabbit hole, but we’ll try to avoid that. Today we’ll focus on practical survival kit fire starters.
Keep it simple, not primitive!
Fire-making goes back a long ways. Some folks still practice primitive fire-making skills like bow drills, flint & steel, or fire pistons. And if it interests you go for it. But when you’ve just crashed your plane, it’s sleeting and your leg hurts it isn’t the time to play caveman. You want a fire quickly.
Lighting Up
A simple match, or a flick from a lighter can get a fire started under ideal conditions. Since conditions aren’t ideal, bring stormproof matches instead. The manufacturer coats these with a compound similar to a road flare. As a result, once they’re started they’re nearly impossible to put out.
I keep a supply of these in a waterproof case, along with some other goodies.
I do carry a small butane lighter for use whenever possible, and a strip of waxed paper as a firestarter.
Keep it Burning
In wet conditions you need some fuel that will burn even when wet. As it burns, it will dry out adjacent wet fuel and set it alight, which will dry out further fuel, and so on. Ideally, you’d find birch bark in the field, which works great. But conditions probably aren’t ideal, so bring something along.
The bag on the left contains firestarter sticks made of wax-impregnated sawdust. I broke one in half and set it on top so you can see the layers. They burn even after soaking in water. On the right you see waxed paper. It works surprisingly well, though it doesn’t burn as long as the sticks.
You can make your own survival kit fire starters too. Any of the classic recipes from scouting work great: wood shavings and wax, dryer lint and wax, cotton balls and petroleum jelly, etc.
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