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What equipment does your troop provide?


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With the recent "Cost of being a Scout" thread and @TMSM's tent woes, I'm curious about how much gear is provided for scouts by other troops. In my own troop, the QM has it rather easy: a few lanterns, dutch ovens, and a patrol box or two. We have a few loaner tents, backpacks, and sleeping bags, but they mostly gather dust. They're not high quality items and the new scouts usually borrow from elsewhere until they can get their own camping gear for Christmas and birthdays.

What does your troop do?

 

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Each patrol has a  Patrol Box (pots, frying pan, cooking utensils, cast iron griddle, measuring cups, paper towels, wash bins, etc.), stove, lantern, Dutch Oven (and lid lifter / lid stand), propane tank, stand pipe, pop-up garbage can and 5 gallon water jug, large clear plastic bin for food and a cooler.

We have around 10 troop tents and a couple of old loaner backpacks.  I think there is a sleeping bag that someone donated that we haven't found a home for.  I also have a bunch of hiking shoes and scout pants that people have given me to be provided to new Scouts.  We encourage Scouts to first get a mess kit, sleeping pad and sleeping bag.  I do a backpacking gear presentation for the Webelos and their parents before they join the Troop.  That gives them an idea of what gear to get (my advice is to save money by getting good gear first rather than buying something inexpensive just to replace it).  

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Depends on how big your troop is. The bigger, you may not give tents. We have 11-12 scouts and are only one patrol. We did try two patrols but we ended up becoming one at all camping trips anyway. We supply tents, all cooking supplies, Dutch oven, stove(s), and more.

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We provide for the patrols cooking gear, water bladder, stove, lanterns, tarps, table, fire bag.  Scouts provide everything else

In the trailer we carry consumables; propane, mantles, trash bags, whatnot.  Also we have dutch ovens as needed

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We provide patrol boxes with cooking supplys. Stoves, Cast iron ware,tents,tarps,water coolers,laterns,propane and charcoal. All of the basics.

We have a hand me down backpacks and pads.

We do fundraising every year and the scouts decide what they need.

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I've been involved in two troops. 

First troop: They had everything you'd need, except personal gear. And even then you could ask around and find someone willing to loan you something. They also picked up several troop's worth of gear when those troops folded. They also did alternative forms of "tents" for the right situations. The adults at summer camp all sleep under ridge line tarp(s). Usually the tarps were roped together to form one long adult area with our cots and totes underneath. I really love their scout setups. They had a donated carport with sides they used either as a long term dining fly or a common sleeping shelter. The sides would be staked out for maximum ventilation and brought in when we had a strong enough rain threat. Or not used at all when in dining fly mode. They also used a quonset hut structure (rebar for stakes, PVC electrical conduit for the ribs fitted over grounded rebar, tarp(s), and guylines) that they configured based on the weather. They could string several in a row to make the hut various sizes or separate huts for patrols. Worked great for long term summer camping and you could set up a good number of scouts into the same area. For extreme rain conditions, we'd packed our gear back into our totes to keep them dry in case of shelter failure. In Oklahoma, everything dries quickly in the summer if something did get wet. 

Second troop: They had all their gear in a trailer and it was stolen. I don't know if they had a storage hut at the time, but the trailer was fully loaded when it was stolen. The public support was great and they picked up a donated trailer and with a lot of donations, support, and fund raisers, they've managed to gear back up to where they have enough tents and other gear for the troop. Sadly, I've not been on a weekend camp out with them yet, so I've not seen their entire setup. I've only been on a summer camp week with them with a platform tent site. Thankfully my work is shifting where I will be doing weekend camp outs with them starting in August. 

 

I do have to laugh though. I'm more of a do with less type of camper. The other two regular adults seem to be do with more types. My two true luxuries are a Sansbug and a strong chair with built in fold-able side table. Oh, and I did have a hammock, but it the inner rope broke last time I was using it. That was a way to stop a nap, I tell ya. 

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We provide tents, ground tarps, dinning fly for each patrol(different colors), patrol boxes will all the required cooking gear, small dutch oven tables, charcoal stove (we only do propane at summer camp),water jugs, dutch ovens. We have 30 tents, 6 backpacking tents, 5 pup tents and 14 dutch ovens. Every bit of equipment is marked with 1 of 5 colors and each patrol is assigned a color, this helps to reduce arguements when someone didnt pack their (stove, tent, jug etc).

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Stuff in our storage closet that gets used a lot: Flags, merit badge books, first aid equipment, ropes/poles for lashings.

Stuff in our storage closet that never gets used: Mishmash of camping equipment that was mostly discarded from Scouting families who didn't want/need the stuff.

 For our troop campouts, everyone brings their own tents, stoves, etc from home. I like that solution because the Scouts are then motivated to take care of it. Troop camping equipment generally gets thrashed.

 

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Each patrol, including the adult patrol, has a chuck box with all cooking equipment.  Scouts provide tents and all personal gear.

We recently bought backpacking tents since few if any of the scout tents are backpacking appropriate.

We have a stash of backpacks that can be borrowed.

I prefer the scouts, if able, to provide their own gear and be responsible for it.  At the same time, we can assist any scout with financial limitations.

We HAD some sleeping bags that were never used since I joined the troop.  Those had to be discarded when we moved to a new storage shed.

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3 hours ago, TMSM said:

We provide tents, ground tarps, dinning fly for each patrol(different colors), patrol boxes will all the required cooking gear, small dutch oven tables, charcoal stove (we only do propane at summer camp),water jugs, dutch ovens. We have 30 tents, 6 backpacking tents, 5 pup tents and 14 dutch ovens. Every bit of equipment is marked with 1 of 5 colors and each patrol is assigned a color, this helps to reduce arguements when someone didnt pack their (stove, tent, jug etc).

Did you mark the dutch ovens somehow?  I could never find a good idea on how to mark those so they could be easily identified.    

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7 minutes ago, thrifty said:

Did you mark the dutch ovens somehow?  I could never find a good idea on how to mark those so they could be easily identified.    

Two ideas:

  • A pattern of varying width brass rings on the lid and handle (e.g. wide-narrow-wide, narrow-wide-wide, etc ...). Relatively easy to implement, but will wear/break off eventually.
  • Weld matching symbols on the lid and pot. Harder, but there may be a patch for it. ;)
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53 minutes ago, thrifty said:

Did you mark the dutch ovens somehow?  I could never find a good idea on how to mark those so they could be easily identified.    

We don't mark our ovens but we did switch to using aluminum liners and they alway come back clean. Our District uses brass number tags on a ring and that seems to be a good solution

 

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