I have one of these on it's way to me... From the photos (not mine) it appears to be unfired and still has the suppliers name stuck on with sellotape which I will leave well alone. It seems to have lost the globe and its original hood which has been replaced with an Anchor hood but it has some interesting features, such as an integral pre-heat cup molded into the collar securing plate which is something I've never seen before. The hood has a few tiny corrosion spots but the fount and collar look pretty clean and the marks I can see don't look like rust to me. Did the Aeroplane have a brass tank or maybe thicker chrome plating? I'll post some more photos when it arrives.
Such kind of pre heat cup is a feature I know only from the 150cp Geniol and Petromax lanterns. Regs willi
I have only seen the integral preheat cup like that on a Stenly(Petromax clone) lantern. The collar securing plate on my Aeroplane is enameled steel.
@ColinG This type of integral preheat cup is also found on Optimus 350, 1350, 550 and 1550 lanterns. Personally, I don't think much of it at all. It's too low down the vapouriser and is not very efficient which is probably why this type of cup holds twice as much alcohol as a horseshoe shaped one - approx. 10 ml vs. 5 ml. In spite of the extra capacity, don't be surprised if you need to preheat the lantern twice. Henry.
Hi Henry, I also have an Optimus 1550, and it starts effortlessly with the integrated preheat cup only filled half...
Hi Jacob, what are you half filling the preheat cup with ? Even on a warm evening both my 350 and 550 lanterns needed a full (and I do mean full !) cup of methylated spirits to sufficiently preheat the vapouriser to avoid a flare-up. On cool evenings, I just don't bother with modern Optimus lanterns, true, when they're going, they burn bright and steady but here in the U.K. meths / spirit is relatively expensive and I can light two or three other brand lanterns with the same amount of spirit it takes to light just one modern Optimus. The older 200 and 300 models are far superior lanterns.
