I found this very depressing, sounds like we should be a lot keener to get rid of 100LL.

Though I question whether a "splash on the skin can be lethal"

https://qz.com/2158594/do-you-live-near ... ource=digg

I'm all about going unleaded, the science has been around for decades. However if a splash on the skin is lethal, I'm invincible.

Read the article, the “statistics” are complete bullshit. A GA airport that does 400,000 operations per year? Do the math, not possible.
Lead levels at .2 but the threshold for concern is 3.5! How is anyone still alive?

Getting 100ll on your skin is lethal? I guess I’m immune.

StillLearning wrote:Read the article, the “statistics” are complete bullshit. A GA airport that does 400,000 operations per year? Do the math, not possible.
Lead levels at .2 but the threshold for concern is 3.5! How is anyone still alive?

Getting 100ll on your skin is lethal? I guess I’m immune.

It actually says 200,000 a year and I was sceptical also, but if you click on the link it takes you here:

https://countyairports.sccgov.org/opera ... in-airport

which I found really interesting, in 1978 it was 398,000!!

And for Deer Valley:

In the case of DVT, the airport
experienced 402,000 take offs and landings in
2020. While this number is fewer than it was in
2019, it’s very close to those of 2018. Not bad, all
things considered

Amazing!

As for the splash on your skin I am dead many times over.

Interesting. It's a projection of exposure based on GA traffic. Here's their methodology:

Quartz wrote:Methodology
Quartz analyzed 350 million aircraft transponder data points provided by ADS-B Exchange to map the flight paths of airplanes flying at the top 100 lead-emitting airports from 2016 to 2022. Aircraft were tracked between 50 and 10,000 ft of the FAA-listed elevation. Emissions are most likely to affect nearby communities at these altitudes. Areas near the end of runways are of particular concern because that’s where fuel consumption can be the highest as planes increase throttle for takeoff. The color scale of aircraft traffic is based on the number of aircraft that sent transponder locations originating from that spot.

No mention of distinction between oil burners, 100L, and us mogas-burning savages, which might bring their totals down. Glad the ADS-B is a data source now for condemning GA operations. Perfect. Did they include the electric aircraft traffic, too? Not that there's anything wrong with electric aircraft.

I guess I'm more disappointed that there are warrior-advocates out there writing this stuff. Such a drop in the bucket next to other sources of pollution.

I'd rather splash some 100LL on my skin than this "Clean burn" citronella fuel we have for our mosquito tiki torches. The stuff is grotesque and hard to wash off.

If you concede, even a little tiny bit, that airplanes are dirty or that 100ll might be less than perfect you have lost. 100% lost, game over, walk between airports if you must visit them. Still surprises me that adults, and advocacy orgs(AOPA, EAA) don't understand this by now. Personally I don't care when I can't fly anymore I will captain a coal schooner, moving coal by sail is where this is all going. That is the future of transportation and energy.

The numbers at Deer Valley look close enough to be believable. First off, it's the busiest GA airport they have listed, so it's an outlier.

~400,000 operations (takeoffs or landings) per year, in an environment (Phoenix) loaded with flight training... They have two runways, so 200,000 ops per runway.

A year has 525,600 minutes (365*60*24), so an average of 2.6 minutes per operation. If you could do an operation once a minute, you could do the daily average in 9.3 hours.

Now, making some assumptions, let's say 60% of ops are T&Gs... That means 240,000 operations are both a landing and a takeoff concurrently, and the remaining 160,000 are single events. In essence, that 240,000 turns into 120,000 combined ops, plus the 160,000 single ops, carry the one, etc... equals 280,000 takeoffs, landings, or T&Gs. With two runways, that's 140,000 ops per runway, or an average of about 3 minutes 45 seconds per operation. Seems possible with a bunch of students doing pattern work in a loop. For example, below is one Deer Valley registered airplane doing 11 laps and one course reversal landing, for about 12 T&Gs, 24 operations. Might have taken 45 minutes for the T&G's... That's oddly 3 minutes a 45 seconds per operation, or the average suggest above... 4 airplanes in each pattern (8 aircraft total) doing laps 4 hours a day, 5 days a week would get beyond the published ops number.

For reference, Bend, Oregon has a single uncontrolled runway, with crappier weather, and they claim 141,000 ops a year. It's a madhouse, with a half dozen helicopters hovering all day long, and a nonstop pattern. I've sat on the ground, #1, waiting for the pattern spacing to open enough to take off, for 15 minutes before. Mercifully Bend will be getting a tower soon.

Not sure how I descended down this rabbit hole... Enjoy the lead while we've got it. I for one would be thrilled to get rid of it. No more stuck valves, or stuck rings. Oil that could last twice as long...

A lead study conducted by Santa Clara County was reported in a local newspaper 2 days ago. The study found that soil samples taken at Reid-Hillview of Santa Clara County contained lead levels below local, state, and federal safety limits.

Facts stopped winning arguments long ago. I'm anxious for a lead free version of avgas to be available. Cleaning the belly of my plane is a nightmare between oil from the breather tube and lead from the exhaust. I've had to taxi back to the hangar more than once when my runup indicated a plug was fouled with lead deposits. The GAMI 100 octane lead free fuel seems to have checked all of the FAA's analytical boxes, but the feds are super nervous about manufacturer's data after the Boeing 737 Max debacle, so it'll be a while before that fuel is approved. Then it will be longer until the new formulation is widely available, and it will come at a cost premium. Maybe it's time to take up soaring...

...

AVweb ran an article on June 6, 2022 "FAA Continues To Stall On G100UL" penned by Paul Bertorelli. Pilots got pretty spun up on a new FAA Point Of Contact (POC) - Lirio Liu. She and her office staff have responded to GAMI's - George Braly and reportedly all is well. She has been at the FAA for a long time that included working with Robinson Helicopter in the early days of the R22 certification and will move this approval along.

We are not allowed to talk politics here. Who you vote for does matter. I have a mogas STC. BTW the no lead gang will never be satisfied until the last internal combustion engine is melted down and turned into bike parts.

I don't think that the majority of people actually want to stop GA. But reducing the amount of lead that we dump is a no brainer. Articles like that one have no counterpoint, and I think it is all a prt of GAs poor image in the eyes of Joe Public. They just see a bunch of rich guys burning gas. I have never understood why boating is so acceptable but GA is not. I sold a very average sailboat, learnt to fly and bought a nice 170 with money left over.

I really think it is a public image, and every little bit that we can do to spread the word and get the general public to relate is good. I mean how many people understand that all those circuits are training the airline pilots that fly them around, and the freight pilots who bring them their Amazon junk?

daedaluscan wrote:I I mean how many people understand that all those circuits are training the airline pilots that fly them around, and the freight pilots who bring them their Amazon junk?

"Attention...for those passengers waiting at gate 78, Alaska Airlines flight 1017 to Seattle has been cancelled. The little airport where our pilots practice has been shut down."

Seems like a fairly straight-forward interim solution would be to make mogas available at airports wherever avgas is. Something like 80% of all GA aircraft can run mogas and pilots would be happy to do so if it was convenient. Those 172's doing all those circuits over San Jose for sure could run mogas.

Tetraethyl lead is a savagely nasty compound. Having to be around it is my biggest misgiving with GA frankly, and I’ll come off as taking a hard tack on the subject I know. I can’t wait for lead free approved fuels for big bore Conts and Lycs, honestly, and would happily pay more for it. It’s also one of the reasons I way prefer turbines. Yes, there’s going to be hysteria around it, I didn’t read the link I’m sure it goes too far.

However, Tetraethyl lead is quite rightly considered one of them most damaging inventions in human history, and it killed its inventor. I know it does me no good, and finds its way into you even when you’re careful. I suffered lead poisoning as a young man (firearms and avgas related), and unfortunately, it never leaves your body. I sincerely wish I’d been more aware, and am extremely careful with my kids around it.

I’m cheering for, and excited by GAMI’s progress towards lead free fuel. This said, it simply isn’t happening near quickly enough. We needed this 30 years ago.

Ardent wrote:Tetraethyl lead is a savagely nasty compound.

The stuff you can buy to add to your 100LL to keep the lead from fouling the plugs has TCP in it. In the 1950s my dad always filled up our 1940 Ford at a service station that advertised their fuel had TCP in it. I asked him what TCP stands for. He said it was Tom Cat Piss.

OregonMaule wrote:BTW the no lead gang will never be satisfied until the last internal combustion engine is melted down and turned into bike parts.

and the last GA airport is converted into a shopping mall or unaffordable housing.

OregonMaule wrote:We are not allowed to talk politics here. Who you vote for does matter. I have a mogas STC. BTW the no lead gang will never be satisfied until the last internal combustion engine is melted down and turned into bike parts.

I’m in the no lead gang, because it makes sense and will actually increase the life of our planes and sport rather than be its death knell. Change goes both ways, this one is very much for the better.

daedaluscan wrote:Articles like that one have no counterpoint, and I think it is all a part of GAs poor image in the eyes of Joe Public. They just see a bunch of rich guys burning gas.

I think the best counterpoint is that lead levels are all below safe limits, and that pilots are keen to embrace unleaded fuel when it's available at the FBO and legal...

We should be keen to improve the image of GA. Getting rid of the lead is a no-brainer as has been said by several people.
The end of gas in aircraft is not realistic in our lifetimes, so efficiency and clean-burning are very important.

Agree that you can buy a $100k boat just to tow a wakeboard around in circles and that's just normal behaviour, but flying a $50k plane is somehow "rich man's sport".