7 ms·

Agreed, but sadly it's still a niche fuel. Although I have to admit that for a (hopefully) brief time, we've seen airplane gas and corner-gas-station gas the sa

Agreed, but sadly it's still a niche fuel. Although I have to admit that for a (hopefully) brief time, we've seen airplane gas and corner-gas-station gas the same price in California! I think that unless a large number of GA airplanes can run on true automotive gas (which means gasohol now) in the near future, GA is doomed. This is something the industry should have been tackling with abandon for the last 20 years. But they failed to take lead seriously for the last 50, so can we expect better? Maybe. I think there is one Rotax engine that can run on gosohol (10% ethanol). We need much more of that, and widespread adoption of fuel injection and electronic ignition ASAP. Oh, and we need more people to stand up for their local airports. Corrupt local politicians, developers, and fake-NIMBY land speculators are all arrayed to destroy our nation's aviation infrastructure for personal profit. Even airlines are in on it. Innovations like this unleaded fuel and electrification will cease if there's no place to deploy them.

sokoloff 4y ago
“George Braly, chief engineer at GAMI, said the fuel can be made with components “that are found inside the fence of any refinery.”” Now, that quote comes from the principal at GAMI and in a GAMI newsletter, but over the last decade and a half of following this, I’ve found him to be pretty damned straightforward. https://gami.com/g100ul/AvGas0211.pdf https://gami.com/g100ul/AvGas0211.pdf
boppo1 4y ago
Lowering the financial barrier to entry would help. Idk how, but part of the industry's problem is that people who want to learn to fly can't afford to.
- LadyCailin 4y ago
  I don’t want more incompetent people flying planes, so I’m content to keep it expensive enough to keep out people that aren’t going to take it deadly serious - because it is. Expense doesn’t guarantee that, of course, but it limits the collateral damage.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    I've been flying for almost 25 years. I haven't seen much correlation between income/wealth and how seriously pilots take aviation. I've seen rich people take it extremely seriously and with great attention to detail and safety, just the same as I've seen people who struggle to get the money together to go flying do the same. I've also seen a lot of rich, successful, type-A people just not have the mindset of "Oh shit, this could easily kill me" because they've been successful at some other aspect of life.
    - blitzar 4y ago
      You fly jets long enough, something like this happens.
  - dzhiurgis 4y ago
    Wait until you hear how much eScooters cost
  - sv123 4y ago
    There might be a correlation in the other direction. Successful and wealthy people have a propensity to buying more expensive and flashier planes, which generally equates to faster, which is something an inexperienced pilot should always try to avoid.
- NonNefarious 4y ago
  Fuel costs are a huge part of it.
maxerickson 4y ago
Ethanol free gas is widely available (In Michigan stations call it Rec fuel). Are you concerned about cost, availability, some other factor?
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Availability is limited in many places. California, Massachusetts and New Jersey have very few stations.
- NonNefarious 4y ago
  I disagree. I haven't seen alcohol-free gas in decades, in Los Angeles, Chicago, or anywhere else that I can remember.
dahdum 4y ago
> Oh, and we need more people to stand up for their local airports. Corrupt local politicians, developers, and fake-NIMBY land speculators are all arrayed to destroy our nation's aviation infrastructure for personal profit. I'm skeptical the public will stand up for GA. At least from my perspective, progressives and much of the left would prefer the industry fade away entirely. It's been in decline for decades and with the new trend of public carbon shaming I don't think you'll get many who come out in support of it beyond rural conservatives.
- NonNefarious 4y ago
  I share your skepticism, but will still work to oppose what contributes to it.
- p_l 4y ago
  Not all of us are unknowing of how interconnected GA capability is to many other areas of economy, even if we live in countries with less such impact. Now, landlords looking for more land (especially well communicated) for apartments are very happy to push for everything that removes airports so long as they can reuse the land afterwards...
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    Airports consume an awful lot of land directly, cause severe pollution issues for even more land (by noise, mostly) and severely limit land use in the flight paths due to safety concerns. Building out actually capable high speed and regional rail infrastructure is the way forward.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      If you get high-speed rail to be competitive with flying a 175 knot piston airplane, piston GA travel will fall off a lot. I love flying, but I’d switch.
      - mschuster91 4y ago
cossatot 4y ago
Oh, and we need more people to stand up for their local airports. Corrupt local politicians, developers, and fake-NIMBY land speculators are all arrayed to destroy our nation's aviation infrastructure for personal profit. Even airlines are in on it. Innovations like this unleaded fuel and electrification will cease if there's no place to deploy them. So, I think GA is great in principle, and I use some products from it (mostly digital elevation data from airborne lidar, which is amazing). But it seems to have a very large component of taxpayers footing the bill for rich guys' toys/playgrounds (particularly for the infrastructure, not for planes themselves); this opinion has been influenced by talking with people I consider honest who have worked in municipal/county government, but I don't have any numbers. Can the many GA enthusiasts here give provide some insight into the public benefit from GA? Please note that I am sort of asking to be convinced and am not being antagonistic.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  There are places in America that are a hundred or more miles away from the nearest hospital. These small airports are vital to rural healthcare. Sure, all those people could move to more populated places, but then you'd have nothing to eat. Source: The company I work for is slightly involved with air ambulances.
- AYBABTME 4y ago
  For one, there's no country in the world where the GA scene is like it is in the US. There's airports everywhere and flying is mostly accessible. As such, like US universities attract the world's students, the US GA airports attract a _ton_ of foreign pilot students. That's just one angle. Another angle: the US is a lame duck in term of mass transit infrastructure like trains. So development and advancements in those fields occurs elsewhere, like in Europe and Asia. But in the case of aviation infrastructure, US is miles ahead. And as a result, a lot more aerospace stuff happens in the US than anywhere else. It's not as directly useful to the general public as inter-city trains, but it does have a lot of positive side effects for the economy and industries. Perhaps one day, flying will simplify and become commonplace for the average person, like cars that were, as an industry, born in the US. And then on that day, it'll seem pretty smart to have nurtured general aviation and allowed aerospace to germinate. GA looks like a rich people's hobby, and it sort of is. But it's not "10M$ in the bank" rich. The middle (as a treat) and upper class can afford to fly GA. In most other countries, that's just too out of reach for most people, it's not realistically in the cards unless you want to have a career in that field.
sv123 4y ago
I imagine the idea is now that it is approved for every piston engine then the EPA can ban 100LL and airports everywhere can switch to 100UL instead.
dreamcompiler 4y ago
And turbochargers. Cars benefit from turbos and they don't go from lean to rich to lean every day. Planes do that several times on every trip, and can benefit from turbos much more.
- jabl 4y ago
  The logical conclusion of that argument is to scale up the turbo, rip out the big chunking reciprocating mass of metal and just inject fuel directly in a can ahead of the turbo. ;) (Oh, and since your gas generator no longer has a prop shaft sticking out of it, you need to mount the shaft on the turbo instead. Possibly on a separate turbine wheel.)
  - dreamcompiler 4y ago
    Hey, I seem to recall somebody tried that :-) The distinction of course is about reliability and cost. If a turbo quits, your piston engine can probably still limp along. But if your turbine quits, the houses are gonna get bigger...
jabl 4y ago
> Agreed, but sadly it's still a niche fuel. ... I think that unless a large number of GA airplanes can run on true automotive gas (which means gasohol now) in the near future, GA is doomed. There are several problems with gasohol outside the core engine, from compatibility with fuel systems (bladders etc.), to phase separation, to vapor lock, to hygroscopicity. I'm sure that can be designed around, but it's not a drop-in replacement in planes designed for avgas. If you want an abundant and affordable fuel, in the aviation world that's Jet A(-1). There's some limited success with Jet A burning diesel engines for the GA market (Thielert (or whatever they're called today) and Austro mainly). Personally I think it would be cool if turbines suitable for GA would be developed. Currently turbines cost an arm and a leg, but I think partially that is an effect of development focused on power/weight and fuel efficiency, cost be damned. That might suit commercial and military use, but not GA. And yes, turbines don't scale down very well either. Still, a turbine that would have an upfront cost competitive with current GA engines would be very attractive, even if it would come at a cost in fuel efficiency. That would be, I think, more than compensated by the power/weight and safety advantages, as well as fuel availability and affordability. I think there are a couple of companies working in this space (TurbAero and Turbotech that I'm aware of, maybe others as well), we'll see if any of them ever come to fruition.
- p_l 4y ago
  A big problem with turbines is overhauls and how they are calculated. For piston engines, overhaul time is calculated from amount of hours operated. For turbine engines it is calculated from amount of hours and amount of start-stop cycles, whichever is reached first. And in GA, you have short flights and many cycles, which results in overhauls being much more common and expensive.
- NonNefarious 4y ago
  Yep, I wouldn't expect the transition to have occurred overnight. But after several decades of experience in automotive applications, I'd think the GA fleet could have been adapted by now if the industry had taken it seriously. I also realize that the regulatory regime has stifled progress. It seems a bit better now, but it may be too late.

sokoloff 4y ago

“George Braly, chief engineer at GAMI, said the fuel can be made with components “that are found inside the fence of any refinery.”” Now, that quote comes from the principal at GAMI and in a GAMI newsletter, but over the last decade and a half of following this, I’ve found him to be pretty damned straightforward. https://gami.com/g100ul/AvGas0211.pdf https://gami.com/g100ul/AvGas0211.pdf

boppo1 4y ago

Lowering the financial barrier to entry would help. Idk how, but part of the industry's problem is that people who want to learn to fly can't afford to.

LadyCailin 4y ago
I don’t want more incompetent people flying planes, so I’m content to keep it expensive enough to keep out people that aren’t going to take it deadly serious - because it is. Expense doesn’t guarantee that, of course, but it limits the collateral damage.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  I've been flying for almost 25 years. I haven't seen much correlation between income/wealth and how seriously pilots take aviation. I've seen rich people take it extremely seriously and with great attention to detail and safety, just the same as I've seen people who struggle to get the money together to go flying do the same. I've also seen a lot of rich, successful, type-A people just not have the mindset of "Oh shit, this could easily kill me" because they've been successful at some other aspect of life.
  - blitzar 4y ago
    You fly jets long enough, something like this happens.
- dzhiurgis 4y ago
  Wait until you hear how much eScooters cost
- sv123 4y ago
  There might be a correlation in the other direction. Successful and wealthy people have a propensity to buying more expensive and flashier planes, which generally equates to faster, which is something an inexperienced pilot should always try to avoid.
NonNefarious 4y ago
Fuel costs are a huge part of it.

maxerickson 4y ago

Ethanol free gas is widely available (In Michigan stations call it Rec fuel). Are you concerned about cost, availability, some other factor?

Spooky23 4y ago
Availability is limited in many places. California, Massachusetts and New Jersey have very few stations.
NonNefarious 4y ago
I disagree. I haven't seen alcohol-free gas in decades, in Los Angeles, Chicago, or anywhere else that I can remember.

dahdum 4y ago

> Oh, and we need more people to stand up for their local airports. Corrupt local politicians, developers, and fake-NIMBY land speculators are all arrayed to destroy our nation's aviation infrastructure for personal profit. I'm skeptical the public will stand up for GA. At least from my perspective, progressives and much of the left would prefer the industry fade away entirely. It's been in decline for decades and with the new trend of public carbon shaming I don't think you'll get many who come out in support of it beyond rural conservatives.

NonNefarious 4y ago
I share your skepticism, but will still work to oppose what contributes to it.
p_l 4y ago
Not all of us are unknowing of how interconnected GA capability is to many other areas of economy, even if we live in countries with less such impact. Now, landlords looking for more land (especially well communicated) for apartments are very happy to push for everything that removes airports so long as they can reuse the land afterwards...
- mschuster91 4y ago
  Airports consume an awful lot of land directly, cause severe pollution issues for even more land (by noise, mostly) and severely limit land use in the flight paths due to safety concerns. Building out actually capable high speed and regional rail infrastructure is the way forward.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    If you get high-speed rail to be competitive with flying a 175 knot piston airplane, piston GA travel will fall off a lot. I love flying, but I’d switch.
    - mschuster91 4y ago

cossatot 4y ago

Oh, and we need more people to stand up for their local airports. Corrupt local politicians, developers, and fake-NIMBY land speculators are all arrayed to destroy our nation's aviation infrastructure for personal profit. Even airlines are in on it. Innovations like this unleaded fuel and electrification will cease if there's no place to deploy them. So, I think GA is great in principle, and I use some products from it (mostly digital elevation data from airborne lidar, which is amazing). But it seems to have a very large component of taxpayers footing the bill for rich guys' toys/playgrounds (particularly for the infrastructure, not for planes themselves); this opinion has been influenced by talking with people I consider honest who have worked in municipal/county government, but I don't have any numbers. Can the many GA enthusiasts here give provide some insight into the public benefit from GA? Please note that I am sort of asking to be convinced and am not being antagonistic.

reaperducer 4y ago
There are places in America that are a hundred or more miles away from the nearest hospital. These small airports are vital to rural healthcare. Sure, all those people could move to more populated places, but then you'd have nothing to eat. Source: The company I work for is slightly involved with air ambulances.
AYBABTME 4y ago
For one, there's no country in the world where the GA scene is like it is in the US. There's airports everywhere and flying is mostly accessible. As such, like US universities attract the world's students, the US GA airports attract a _ton_ of foreign pilot students. That's just one angle. Another angle: the US is a lame duck in term of mass transit infrastructure like trains. So development and advancements in those fields occurs elsewhere, like in Europe and Asia. But in the case of aviation infrastructure, US is miles ahead. And as a result, a lot more aerospace stuff happens in the US than anywhere else. It's not as directly useful to the general public as inter-city trains, but it does have a lot of positive side effects for the economy and industries. Perhaps one day, flying will simplify and become commonplace for the average person, like cars that were, as an industry, born in the US. And then on that day, it'll seem pretty smart to have nurtured general aviation and allowed aerospace to germinate. GA looks like a rich people's hobby, and it sort of is. But it's not "10M$ in the bank" rich. The middle (as a treat) and upper class can afford to fly GA. In most other countries, that's just too out of reach for most people, it's not realistically in the cards unless you want to have a career in that field.

sv123 4y ago

I imagine the idea is now that it is approved for every piston engine then the EPA can ban 100LL and airports everywhere can switch to 100UL instead.

dreamcompiler 4y ago

And turbochargers. Cars benefit from turbos and they don't go from lean to rich to lean every day. Planes do that several times on every trip, and can benefit from turbos much more.

jabl 4y ago
The logical conclusion of that argument is to scale up the turbo, rip out the big chunking reciprocating mass of metal and just inject fuel directly in a can ahead of the turbo. ;) (Oh, and since your gas generator no longer has a prop shaft sticking out of it, you need to mount the shaft on the turbo instead. Possibly on a separate turbine wheel.)
- dreamcompiler 4y ago
  Hey, I seem to recall somebody tried that :-) The distinction of course is about reliability and cost. If a turbo quits, your piston engine can probably still limp along. But if your turbine quits, the houses are gonna get bigger...

jabl 4y ago

> Agreed, but sadly it's still a niche fuel. ... I think that unless a large number of GA airplanes can run on true automotive gas (which means gasohol now) in the near future, GA is doomed. There are several problems with gasohol outside the core engine, from compatibility with fuel systems (bladders etc.), to phase separation, to vapor lock, to hygroscopicity. I'm sure that can be designed around, but it's not a drop-in replacement in planes designed for avgas. If you want an abundant and affordable fuel, in the aviation world that's Jet A(-1). There's some limited success with Jet A burning diesel engines for the GA market (Thielert (or whatever they're called today) and Austro mainly). Personally I think it would be cool if turbines suitable for GA would be developed. Currently turbines cost an arm and a leg, but I think partially that is an effect of development focused on power/weight and fuel efficiency, cost be damned. That might suit commercial and military use, but not GA. And yes, turbines don't scale down very well either. Still, a turbine that would have an upfront cost competitive with current GA engines would be very attractive, even if it would come at a cost in fuel efficiency. That would be, I think, more than compensated by the power/weight and safety advantages, as well as fuel availability and affordability. I think there are a couple of companies working in this space (TurbAero and Turbotech that I'm aware of, maybe others as well), we'll see if any of them ever come to fruition.

p_l 4y ago
A big problem with turbines is overhauls and how they are calculated. For piston engines, overhaul time is calculated from amount of hours operated. For turbine engines it is calculated from amount of hours and amount of start-stop cycles, whichever is reached first. And in GA, you have short flights and many cycles, which results in overhauls being much more common and expensive.
NonNefarious 4y ago
Yep, I wouldn't expect the transition to have occurred overnight. But after several decades of experience in automotive applications, I'd think the GA fleet could have been adapted by now if the industry had taken it seriously. I also realize that the regulatory regime has stifled progress. It seems a bit better now, but it may be too late.