Hawthorne, from the Chicago Tribune... sensationalize much??

Using his own numbers - we've reduced Aviation leaded emissions by 99.35% between 1980 and 2011 - and NOW there's a crisis??? *facepalm*

There are several bio-fuels being developed right now that are very promising as direct replacements for 100LL, with similar burn properties and octane equivalencies, as well as the ability to be mass-produced. No mention of that, or the fact that aircraft and engine manufacturers are onboard and helping to fund development of these fuels. No attempt to get input from organizations like AOPA.

Pure agenda reporting. Ugh. I hate these guys.

He also reports that Mogas without ethanol is widely available. Apparently he has never had to buy any...

A1Skinner wrote:He also reports that Mogas without ethanol is widely available. Apparently he has never had to buy any...

He meant in the production chain it's widely available. As you see in his next sentence he acknowledges that it's hard to buy at airports (you know, where the planes are): "But the market is so small that most airports sell only two types of fuel: leaded avgas for piston-engined aircraft and jet fuel for everything else."

CapnMike wrote:Using his own numbers - we've reduced Aviation leaded emissions by 99.35% between 1980 and 2011 - and NOW there's a crisis??? *facepalm*

No, not "NOW there's a crisis". There has always been a crisis. This has been a decades long fight. Lead is nasty stuff.

We are the last significant source of it. And, yes, levels across the board are down tons, but that just makes us look self interested with, to use your word, an "agenda" when the few remaining areas that still test high for lead tend to be clustered around airports.

rw2 wrote:

A1Skinner wrote:He also reports that Mogas without ethanol is widely available. Apparently he has never had to buy any...

He meant in the production chain it's widely available. As you see in his next sentence he acknowledges that it's hard to buy at airports (you know, where the planes are): "But the market is so small that most airports sell only two types of fuel: leaded avgas for piston-engined aircraft and jet fuel for everything else."

Is it widely available in the prosuction chain? Almost all fuel stations you go to only have ethanol fuel. 87 octane ethanol free is non existent as far as I know in Canada. I buy 91 E0 in bulk and have it delivered. And from reading a lot of posts in different posts on this forum, E0 isn't super widely available down in the US either...

Availability of E0 is really location dependent. It's pretty much impossible to get in California, rare in the corn belt (but can be found at marinas). We are lucky here and it can still be found if you look for it in Idaho. It would be interesting to know what percentage of certified planes have an autofuel STC. Even though the experimentals with Rotax's are a pretty common site at 4GPH they probably don't burn enough fuel to displace the old lead burning fleet. The nice thing is not all airports have to switch, one airport can switch to having E0 and all the people that can burn it will go a bit out of their way to save a few dollars and not have to fill up on 100LL.

One of the factors when I bought my low-compression O-320-powered plane was the ability to burn autofuel, and I think that will be a requirement for me in the future as well.

This is a good article on the missed opportunity of 91 Mogas. Its real, its approved in 80% of small airplanes with an STC, and its cheaper! We just need to get our FBOs to sell it. Or we can wait for them to come up with a replacement, that most of us don't need, and will cost twice what avgas does now.


Mogas: The Great Missed Opportunity

By Paul Bertorelli | October 6, 2013

Every time I do research or reader surveys on mogas for airplanes, I come away thinking I must be living in an alternate universe. Or maybe the people I talk to are. In today’s news columns, we’re reporting on the results of our recent avgas survey, which revealed some interesting movement in opinions toward mogas.

Bottom line: mogas negatives are down and positives are up, meaning more people say they’re interested in using it and fewer people say they wouldn’t even consider it. Yet, the mogas market gains very little traction. It’s not much more available than it was two years ago, when last we did a similar survey.

I have a theory to explain the shifting opinion. Some of it may be attributable to survey error, but based on the comments I read, more owners are seeing aviation as a sunset activity and although readers who took the survey have confidence that a 100-octane replacement will eventually appear, there’s real worry that it won’t be affordable. Thus the interest in mogas.

And the industry dithers on. EAA and AOPA have shown little or no interest in promoting mogas as an option, yet it’s the single most potent factor to reduce the cost of flying. On average, where mogas is available, it’s about $1.40 cheaper than avgas and if your airplane burns eight to 10 GPH and you fly 50 hours a year, that’s up to $700 a year in savings. At some airports it’s more, at others, less. The savings would at least pay for a few months of hangar rent. To be fair, the alphabets haven’t gotten behind mogas for several legitimate reasons, one of which is the resistance of FBOs to install the tankage, knowing they won’t sell much mogas.

Fair enough, I guess. But the biases against mogas are, in my view, utterly unfounded. Yes, it’s true it may be hard to find premium mogas without ethanol in some areas, but complaints about vapor pressure-related problems, lack of octane and engine and carburetor deposits caused by mogas are never substantiated in our surveys. I thought reader Jack Thompson put it best in replying to the survey: “I've been using mogas for 25-plus years with nothing but good results. I'm a mechanical professional engineer, and I'm appalled at the institutional ignorance and head-in-the-sand attitude of the industry on this topic. Pure lunacy.”

There may be a confluence of events that will yet inject life into mogas, however. First, Lycoming’s SI 1070 bulletin approves a long list of engines for mogas, provided the fuel meets certain octane and vapor pressure requirements and a new company called Airworthy Autogas proposes to make and distribute that very fuel. This should, once and for all, address at least some of the unfounded beefs against mogas. Oh, and third, I’m not alone in believing the replacement for avgas, when it eventually arrives, will cost more than 100LL does now. I’m guessing a buck more, so the Delta between mogas and avgas could rise to $2 or more. Airworthy Autogas will, however, cost a little more than traditional mogas, but maybe that will be a good tradeoff against its pedigree. In mogas’s favor is the ever-growing number of Rotax engines that can burn it, as many owners of those aircraft do. Just to be clear, no one is saying mogas will substitute for 100-octane in those high-compression or high-octane engines that require it. That’s a separate problem.

When I spoke to Airworthy Autogas’s Mark Ellery about mogas, he asked me if I would use it. Good question, because I suffer the same biases as many others. For the Cub, I’d worry about the effects of unintended ethanol on seals and o-rings and, frankly, I hate the smell of mogas. But if I had an airplane that burned more than four gallons an hour and/or someone would dispense branded mogas—and Airworthy will be that—then I’d warm to the idea. I think others might, too. By branded, I mean someone’s name is on the pump so I know who’s providing it.

So perhaps we’re at a crossroads of opportunity. An aggressive company is addressing biases against mogas at a time when more expensive 100-octane—which many aircraft simply don’t need—seems to be on the horizon. (Nothing is worse than presuming owners of low-compression engines have to pay more for fuel just to support a 100-octane ecosystem.)

If the economics of Airworthy Autogas prove workable, it then becomes purely a marketing and promotional challenge. Can the company and the industry promote it well enough to defeat the unsubstantiated biases against mogas in general? Will owners begin to demand it? If so, perhaps we could generate enough demand to double or triple the number of airports willing to pump mogas. And that’s where I’d like to see AOPA and EAA go with this idea. If the two associations could pair up in promoting mogas—if Airworthy Autogas, so be it—maybe we could get somewhere.

Otherwise, I’m not sure I see any bright shining path to at least arrest the rising cost of flying airplanes, much less reduce it.

This is what Lycoming has to say about it:
http://www.lycoming.com/Lycoming/OURINN ... Fuels.aspx

A1Skinner wrote:Is it widely available in the prosuction chain? Almost all fuel stations you go to only have ethanol fuel. 87 octane ethanol free is non existent as far as I know in Canada. I buy 91 E0 in bulk and have it delivered.

The fact that you can buy it in bulk kind of answers the question. Yes, it's produced. Airports all over the US find a way to stock it, so it's not like there is one refinery in Maine that produces it and it's only available in the northeast.

The lack of retail availability is mostly a bureaucratic phenomena. If 100ll were eliminated tomorrow, the infrastructure exists to replace it with 91 E0. The two problems are the 20-25% of the fleet that can't run unleaded and some environmental law that makes it hard to sell E0 in some places. The first problem is hard. The second is easy.

Cost of mogas in King Salmon is more than $2 cheaper than avgas at the local FBO, not quite $2 difference in Naknek, where the avgas is not quite so expensive...and neither is the mogas.

Alaska does not have ethanol added to mogas, so that issue is not a big deal here. But even though I use it almost exclusively at home, the only way I have to move mogas is pretty location-specific. When I am away from the home drome, mogas is a lot of logistics to manage, so I just buy what is at the airport.

I just did an engine conversion mod (more displacement but less compression) on my Rotax 912S that allows me to burn regular as opposed to premium mo gas. E 10 or E 0, it doesn't seem to matter, though I make the extra effort to obtain E0 for my bulk tank at home, on the road the E 10 gets the job done. Unfortunately, guys like me flying around happily on mo gas for decades now, whatever octane rating, don't really help out the av gas situation, it's just irrelevant to me and a lot of others. If I had a plane that needed leaded high octane av gas, (25% of the fleet....that many?) I'd be doing everything I could to get out from under it, an engine mod, or whatever, the future looks grim for that fuel, and it's replacement is sure to be even more expensive I always like it when I find out that planes that I casually assumed needed av gas in fact can burn mo gas, it would sure seem to make them more practical and cost effective these days.

on the road the E 10 gets the job done

And that's what really matters.

By the way CG,in that picture when your plane was nosed into the hangar for the upgrade, it looked bigger than my 180.

CG. Thats the reason I was looking for a stock engine when looking for a 180. Texas skywagons and PPonk say no mogas, even though I know it is done. I think that maybe instead of maki g a special gas for planes, why not make the planes burn any gas? Is there someone making bladders and fuel hose that will hold up to ethanol? Thats something I'd love to look into for the 180.

I just checked with the only local fuel distributor that offers E0 premium. To my surprise, having never checked before, they also offer regular in E0, so I know where I'm buying my next 300 gallon load for the home tank. 20 cents a gallon cheaper, so if I do that 75 times my regular burning engine upgrade will pay for itself Thinking more short term, my usual way, that's a 60 bucks savings, I'll take it

rw2 wrote: the few remaining areas that still test high for lead tend to be clustered around airports.

What is the basis for this statement?

I'm based at one of the two airports (out of 15) that were recently "tested" by EPA where EPA claims to have obtained readings in excess of their (recently lowered by an order of magnitude) action levels. EPA put the monitors inside the airport (no public access) directly behind the tails of aircraft in the runup area. EPA deviated from its own study design for our airport, violated its own air testing protocols, disregarded the monitor manufacturer's instructions for proper use and refused to respond when its mistakes were pointed out. They went ahead and released the fallacious data to the public, and--citing this data--Friends of the Earth has renewed its petition to ban 100ll. As far as I know, the other airport that supposedly exceeded EPA's action threshold (Palomar) was subjected to the same kind of manipulation.

For the record, the airborne lead studies at Santa Monica do NOT show significant levels (exceeding EPA's action threshold) off airport, nor do any of the 13 other airports at which the latest round of testing was conducted.

Yes, lead is bad stuff. So are bureaucrats who manipulate studies under guise of "science" to justify their existence and advance the preservationist agenda.

CAVU

Avcon last year updated their list of approved engines that can use of unleaded fuel:
http://www.lycoming.com/Portals/0/Uploa ... 0Fuels.pdf
In it they mention that if the airframe is TC for unleaded fuel and the engine is in the list above, then you can use unleaded gas provided it meets the specs outlined in their bulletin above.

Does this mean that if you have say an 0-360 A1A engine and an airframe which TCDS specifies minimum 80 octane aviation fuel, you can use the 91 octane unleaded fuel sold at FBO (provided it meets Lycoming's standards)?

making bladders and fuel hose

Eagle Fuel Cells uses nitrile rubber construction that is good for ethanol. Anybody else that uses nitrile should be good. I have a Teflon fuel line from the gascolator to the carb. Teflon is good also.

180Marty wrote:

making bladders and fuel hose

Eagle Fuel Cells uses nitrile rubber construction that is good for ethanol. Anybody else that uses nitrile should be good. I have a Teflon fuel line from the gascolator to the carb. Teflon is good also.

Awesome. Thanks Marty. Anything in the carb need replacing? Are you running ethanol?

CAVU wrote:

rw2 wrote: the few remaining areas that still test high for lead tend to be clustered around airports.

What is the basis for this statement?

One of the articles posted here at some point mentioned that lead levels around airports still test above the epa limits (which themselves are increasingly thought of as being too high). I'd be happy to see other evidence.