SR540Beaver

gwd, Boy, you are going to get a different aswer from each responder. Back when we bought one for my son, I did quite a bit of research. We ended up getting the MSR Windpro. Overall, its features seemed to edge out the competition in my mind. Here is a little blurb I found on the internet. "If wind is your worry, but you prefer canisters over liquid fuel, then this is the stove for you. The WindPro worked better in wind tests than all the competitors, and it is the only remote canister stove sold complete with a windscreen and heat reflector. Lightest remote canister stove on the market Minimum weight is less than 7 oz.! Compact - Small enough to fit in a one-liter pot. Supports large cook pots and can be used with bake ovens. Weight: 6.8oz/193g Burn time: 90 minutes for 8 oz canister. Boil time: 4.25 minutes for 1 liter of water."

Calico, Please allow me to disagree with you on something. I have a good deal of experience with Coleman tents. Coleman uses that darned plastic flooring for their tents. You don't have to use a footprint with any tent if you don't want to. However, they do more than keep mositure away from the tent floor. They prolong the life of the tent floor. Even with a footprint, I've had to waterproof a lot of micro holes in the plastic Coleman floor that we have not had to do with my son's Sierra Designs nylon floor. I think a footprint under a Coleman tent is a good investment to make the tent usable for as long as possible. The main mistake that most people make is thinking that they need to place the tent on top of the tarp with the edges of the tarp sticking out all around. If it rains, the sides of the tent just funnels the rain right onto the tarp and traps the water between the tent floor and the tarp. If you look at the footprints that are factory made for a tent, you'll notice that they are smaller than the tent floor by an inch or two. That allows the footprint to protect the tent floor from moisture, rocks and sticks while water running off the tent can soak into the ground around the tent. If you buy a tarp to use as a footprint for a Coleman, fold it so it has no edges sticking out.

Calico did a great job explaining how to sleep in cold weather. Perhaps I missed it, but here are two more suggestions. When you do get your bag out, shake it and fluff it up. The insulation is packed down, especially if it has been packed in a stuff sack or compression sack. It will fluff to some degree on its own. But pick it up and really give it a good shake all over for maximum fluff. If the insulation is packed, it can not insulate as well as when it has all of those little pockets of dead air space. Also, don't cinch the hood completely closed. Leave at least a small opening for your nose and mouth. Breathing into your bag does the same thing as sweating in your bag. When you breath into it, you are pumping it full of moist air that ultimately will make you sleep colder.

My buddy Eamonn and I seem to make a good tag team. I addressed more of the patrol side while he concentrated more on the troop side. I concur with what he has listed. I too, will attempt to add to the list as I think of things.

rkfrance, Cag24 (welcome to the forums) makes a good point. However, if you are starting a new troop, I suspect that you are talking about new recruits rather than experienced scouts. The new boys need to be involved in the process, but may not have the experience needed to make the proper choices. I speak from experience because I helped to start a troop with about 8 Webelos in June 2005. Here is what you will NEED or each patrol to begin with. A stove, a lantern, a 20 lbs propane bottle, a distribution tree and a gas hose. A food box, an ice chest, a couple of water containers, cookware and cooking utensils and some sort of box to put them in. You'll also need some sort of tubs to do dishes in. You'll need a dining fly or an EZ-Up in case of rain. Once you become more established, you may want to add more gear. One or two dutch ovens, a charcoal chimney, tents, a table, a trash can, a turkey cooker for heating cleaning water, tarps, cups, plates and eating utensils. Every troop is different in what they decide to provide. I've been with two troops that did not provide tents and one that does. If the troop can afford it, it sure takes a financial burden off of the boy and his family and makes for a nice looking uniform campsite. I've been with troops that use EZ-Ups for patrol cooking and a troops that uses dining flys. The EZ-Up earns it's name since it can be deployed and staked in about a minutes time. Tarps can be attached to any or all of the four sides to block the wind. They can be elevated high enough to walk under easily. A dining fly gets the job done and reinforces learning and using knots, but takes longer to set up and can't have tarps attached to block the wind. I've been with troops that had plates and cups and with others that require you to supply your own. Start with the neccesities. What do you need to "survive" a weekend in the "wilds". Shelter, "fire" for cooking, light for the dark, protected food and a way to cook it. You can start out with buying cheap plastic Wal-Mart tarps for dining flys. You can scour garage sales for odds and ends pots and pans. You can use a large Rubbermaid container for a check box. You can survive with flashlights instead of a lantern if you have to. Simply think about what you NEED and what kind of comforts you want that you can do cheaply without geeting locked into. As time goes by, your experience and observation of other troops at things like Camporees will give you and your boys ideas for how they want to organize and supply themselves. Good luck!!! Our experiment lasted for just over a year before we decided to shut it down and found larger troops with older boys for our scouts to integrate into. New troops from scratch are hard to get rolling, but not impossible.

Come on you mangey critters, wake up!!!

Interesting question. Our troop has been around for about 40 years and we currently have about 45 active boys. I'm sure that the troop has produced at least one Eagle every year or two, but I don't know. There is another troop similar in age and size that probably has done the same. There are at least two "super" troops that run over 100 boys. I'm sure they have produced a large number also.

And now may the great master of all scouts be with us until we meet again, may we run the race, scouts pace, up the trail that leads to him. Good luck on your adventure Eric!!!

And then there are those hard up districts that will take any half warm body if they agree to do the job.

Ahhhh, the joys of launching rickets.....I remember it well from my childhood. Rockets?! Oh, that's different...nevermind.

Of course there is...... I used to be a Beaver, and a Good 'ol Beaver too, But now I'm finished Beavering, I don't know what to do. I'm growing old and feeble and I can Beaver no more So I am going to work my ticket if I can Back to Gilwell, happy land; I'm going to work my ticket if I can. SR-540 Beaver

Congrats!!! I'll be serving as a troop guide for the first time this fall and looking forward to it. Beavers rule!!!

Sniffs, Ideally, you should have a Webelos I and a Webelos II den leader....not one person doing both. One group of boys is at the beginning of the trail and the other group is at the end. If you cater to the I's, the II's will be repeating what they did a year ago and grow very bored very fast. If you cater to the II's, you are getting the cart before the horse for the I's. One den leader for both groups does no one justice.

I'm registered at a conservative political forum where things often get heated between posters of different political stripes. I'm reminded of what the moderators constantly tell people who complain about postings they don't like. It goes like this, "you don't have the right to not be offended".

A quick Google shows that the following animals have cubs. Jaguar, Panther, Shark and Fox. The Fox cub can also be called a pup. The Tiger cub can also be called a whelp. My favorite name for a 5 year old Cub rank would be Panda.

Kaji, Welcome to the forum! Eventually everything old is new again.....like this thread and Lions. I'm not sure why they would select Lions as a new rank when it has already been used in the past. Obviously, they have to have an animal that has "cubs". Surely there are more than Tigers, Wolves, Bears and Lions.

Scout summer camp is scout summer camp, I don't expect a resort. From some of the camps I've seen, I would doubt that they are pulling a profit. I have seen some that have very nice facilities on them. Most of those buildings usually have a person's name attached to them, which means it wasn't built with profits, but a gift. Our council does not charge a price for in council units during the "off season". I assume they charge out of council units as our neighboring councils do when we use their camps. Since camps have to put out info to units 6 to 8 months before summer camp starts, they have to determine the price pretty early. Some camps have charged the same price for years. I suspect that most of them break even at best.

I just checked our council website and our council contingent has 106 spots available. While a "troop" might not get to go and be led by their SM, they and a few buddies could go if they sign up and pay up. Nothing on the council website had any kind of restrictions on who could sign up or how many from a unit could sign up. It appears to be on a first come basis. Like John said, their are other opportunities out there beside Philmont. I believe our troop has done the Pecos Wilderness in the past. Here are a couple of sites I found that might be useful. http://internet.cybermesa.com/~swede/Lodge66/Trails/Pecos/pecos.html http://internet.cybermesa.com/~swede/Lodge66/Trails/Veredas/veredas.html

It is possible to have different year Quality Unit patches if you are crossing to a troop in a different district. When we were with Cubs, the district we were in did their recharter in March. We crossed to a troop in a district that does their recharter in January. But then our council has 11 districts that cover the southwest corner of the state of Oklahoma. However, the majority of the districts are in the Oklahoma City area, so it is easy to cross district lines when changing units.

Our troop is taking two crews to Northern Tier this year. The SM just sent out an e-mail yesterday to inquire about interest in Seabase for 2007. We had put in for Philmont and Double H and we were only accepted for one crew for Double H in 2007. With 40 active boys in the troop, one Double H crew won't cut it for high adventure. That is why we are also looking at Seabase to give everyone who wants a high adventure trip in 2007 a chance at participating.

Terry, I was one of the folks who complained sometime back about how slow the site had become. I had noticed a dramatic increase in speed lately and had failed to say thanks. My bad. Thank you!

Scouts has a religious aspect to it. No surprise there, it always has and always will. If a troop is running their unit correctly, they should be having a "scouts own" on outings. I guess one way to look at it is a restaurant analogy. If I run a restaurant and 99% of my customers like mashed potatos while the other 2% likes beets, guess which one I'm going to serve most if not all the time? Boys Life presents Old Testament stories in an effort to apply to the broadest range of scouts and simply presents the story without preaching a particular message. I can understand your concern about the Muslim and Bhuddist kids. They make up a very small minority in their community and in scouting and they are used to having to support their own beliefs and culture on their own and ignoring the parts of the community's culture they don't agree with. It isn't like the Boy's Life you are seeing is being shipped to India or Saudi Arabia. All of that being said, many of the scouts I know never bother to read their Boys life magazine.

scoutldr, Most councils do a contingent yearly where any boy in the council who puts down the money can go...provided he meets certain criteria. In addition, individual troops can also apply to go to Philmont or any of the other BSA high adventure bases. My son is goingto Northern Tier this summer with his troop. Well, with the boys in the troop who meet the requirements, want to go and have $825 to spend. They will have two crews of 6 boys, 2 adults and 1 interpreter/guide. Last year they did Philmont. As Gern is finding out, the problem is everyone wants to go and they can only handle so many per season. The troops get put on a waiting list. I've heard before how the whole system works and it sounded like you needed a rocket science degree to figure it out. That is why I mentioned the Double H Base. My understanding is that it is being developed to take some of the strain off of Philmont.

You know, I sometimes think that summer camp is a darned if you do/darned if you don't thing. If you have a good program and a good reputation, you can't fit everyone in who wants to come. One bad summer or a previously bad program and your bad reputation keeps people away no matter what you do to improve it. Let's say that the camp in question cleans up their program and has a dynamite program this year. Based on previous problems, no one will come. If the money doesn't come in, can the program be sustained for next year? Regaining a good reputation is a long term proposition. Will the council think that everything they threw in to the program to improve it was a waste of time since no one came? It is a catch-22. Perhaps camps need to charge more so they can provide a better program. Is trying to keep the price low or in line with what it was 10 years ago creating a hardship for the camps. I remember going to our council camp two years ago. The guy who was supposed to run the health lodge had some health issues that had him running back home to his doctor. We had a surgical nurse and battlefield medic in our unit that were enlisted to fill in for him the majority of the week. They were appalled at the condition of the health lodge and the small amount of inventory to work with. The camp ran for 5 to 6 weeks with probably 500 campers a week. The council had alloted about $200 a week for supplies. They ran thru that in the first 2 days and were having to get creative in their medical care. I'm sure that running a camp is not a cheap proposition. But throwing money at a poorly organized and untrained and uncaring staff isn't the answer either.

New High Adventure Opportunity! Philmont Scout Ranch, in partnership with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, will be offering a new and exciting high adventure opportunity for the summer of 2004. This experience will be offered at the Double H Ranch located in south central New Mexico. Crews will participate in a pristine wilderness environment at elevations over 7,000 feet on a seven-day trek. If you and your Boy Scout troop, Varsity team, or Venturing crew are looking for a unique backpacking experience, make sure you are part of the inaugural year of the Double H High Adventure Base. Highlights Located between Datil and Magdalena New Mexico, 2 hours south of Albuquerque, off US Highway 60. Season will run from June 21st through August 2nd. Seven Day 50-60 mile trek, utilizing Leave-No- Trace principles. Over 100,000 acres of rugged terrain to explore. Visit the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, known as VLA (Very Large Array). Observe elk, mule deer, bear, and other wildlife. Participate in exciting backcountry programs that include state of the art black powder, astronomy, challenge events, geo-caching, and land navigation. Learn about the Native American culture found in the area. Projects to assist the Rocky Mt. Elk Foundation in fulfillment of their conservation plan. For more on this exciting opportunity and reservation information: doubleh@philmontscoutranch.org or 505-376-2281