If in doubt, ask a farmer.

When we bought this rig some six months ago in Toronto, we were delighted it came with a built in a clip-on-the-side gas barbecue which connected to the propane gas supply. It was awesome, as they say about absolutely everything over here. Anyway, we used it almost every evening until one time I probably had too many beers before the assembly process and whilst the rubber gas pipe was connected I managed to drop the darned thing snapping off a vital component. We tried to replace the item at every town we came to but gave up. Not to be deterred, we bought a stand alone job with small propane gas cylinders, made in China!

Well, the first chance to impress us it failed, miserably. There was more heat in a couple of candles so I assigned the thing to the depths of the storage hold next to the original barbecue, no doubt they had some pretty depressing conversations down there.

Today I met a retired farmer from Saskatchewan who was travelling through on his way to Mexico. We drank tea and discussed world politics, he brought to the table coconut macaroons., my favourite! Conversation soon swung around to gas barbecues, as it would, and I told him the sorry tale of "Two failed barbecues Thomas". 

"Let me take a look at these monkeys" he said. The original bit of kit he dismissed as being too far gone. The second, and newest and Chinese he looked at, rubbed his chin, fell silent for a while then asked me to produce a Phillips screwdriver. With this he demolished the gas control knob and adjusted the screw hidden inside. "Try it now" he said so casually. 

Bugger me the flame looked like it might have been used as an afterburner from a Phantom jet!  Red, blue and all metal bits glowing in no time at all.

In celebration I made some burgers to put the beast to the test, passed with flying colours. Apparently, the crew on the space station could see the glow, just as well as after dark now its getting mighty cold.