Raf
Wow, Russ, you’re on a roll. Good piece. 
Wow, Russ, you’re on a roll. Good piece.
Wow… astonishing. You finally figured out the truth doesn’t matter, only the politics. You get one gold star for finally figuring it out. You’ll get another when you report on the final story, like mass production of UL being distributed to airports nationwide all at the same time. Until then, anything less is a real yawner. I’m not holding my breath.
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You’re confusing fantasy with hope. How’s that saying go? Just keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. So what’s changed over the decades that warrants any hope much less even thinking it?
I know, lets start another committee, or, department, or, whatever and call it EagleII, maybe Eagle III… Yeah, that’ll work right? Let’s, set a deadline and paint it with all kinds of hope bullsh—.
We can all gather around a street corner somewhere near a local FISDO and sing songs and scream and yell obscenities and… well, do whatever people do now a days to get things done. Yeah, that’ll work. I can see it now. Russ turning beet red while screaming through his bull horn. Yeah… that’ll work…
Here’s another one for ya. SKUNKD Super Kool Unleaded NO Kan DO. That for sure will get it done.
There’s a really easy solution to this: add the phrase, “In order to meet the need for diverse fuel options that are inclusive of the needs of all GA users…” to the preamble of any regulations addressing lead content in avgas. The DOGE AI thought filters will immediate detect and cancel it all as a DEI initiative regardless of any laws to the contrary, and EPA will soon be demanding that PBS run “Lead is good for you!” ads on Sesame Street as the price for the annual fifty bucks in federal support they get. Everybody wins! 
I’m confused. What (if anything at all) newsworthy was in this word salad? My best guess is that one individual was inspired to say that we should run around like a lady with her hair on fire because someone else is in a tizzy that people are beginning to scrutinize aromatics and question whether they might be more of an issue than we were first led to believe.
In recent years we all should have learned NOT to join in with the crowd that says “Don’t think, just panic and do whatever we want you to do - NOW!”
Regardless of how long it may have taken to get the ball rolling in the first place, now that we are doing it, replacing our one and only AvGas option is not a snap decision, instant gratification, proposition. Calm down. Fuels are becoming available and people are giving their feedback. Crazy ladies who run around with their hair on fire are not the most intelligent people in the first place - don’t be one of them.
I for one prefer that when we make the switch it is because we know and trust the new fuel, and not because someone said: “Pick this one now! or else you will never be allowed to fly again!”
From Russ:
Nothing newsworthy. It’s opinion.
The extinction of general aviation is just around the corner. Lead in fuel and excess noise stands out as the two largest threats but it seems a lot of the general aviation community hasn’t gotten past even the recognition stage that this is a problem. With so many in denial I don’t think we are going to solve the current problems. Extinction is right around the corner and without the correct attitude to recognize and fix the issues, extinction is a very possibility.
If the alphabet groups and the FAA don’t take real leadership on unleaded avgas, the decision will be made for us by regulators and developers who see small airports as real estate waiting to be rezoned. And if the industry doesn’t ensure high-performance engines have a workable solution, we’ll lose a generation of capable piston aircraft along with it.
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You shouldn’t. His job is to report a story as things develop and not wait for the fat lady to sing, and it is fair for hom to look into his crystal ball to give us a reasonable perspeftive on where things are going.
So don’t tell someone how to do their job, don’t judge them based on “I don’t like it (WWWAAAA),” and by all means, don’t hang by your thumbs.
Keep up the good work, Russ.
In life you have to stand up for your rights,freedoms for yourself once in awhile.In words of a civil rights campaigner,”freedom is never granted,it is won”
There are plenty of us in Colorado watching this one. There’s a very hostile faction around KJBC who wants to shut it down so they can hand it over to developers. One part of its lynchpin claims is that lead in the groundwater is poisoning school kids and causing cancer. Another is lead is settling on their window sills. The supporters through an FOIA request dug up a buried formal, scienticic report that said the only place in the area affected by lead was ONE. SINGLE, HOUSE with known lead problems, and there are NO health reports involving kids’ health or cancer patients.
Never mind that the airport is right next to a major highway and surrounded by smaller ones that have been there for a long time before our cars required unleaded. Never mind the decades when leaded fuel was the only thing. Lead just doesn’t go away. Ir should still be there.
I think the term is “Chicken Little Syndrome.”
There’s also the noise issue. A rep from my club attended the “listening session” you mentioned, three hours held IN A HANGAR WITH THE DOOR OPEN AND NO INTERRUPTIONS. Some jamoke claimed he had to sleep in the closet and most of the others complained about noise, not the jets coming and going, but “little airplanes buzzing and circling our houses” from touch-and-go ops. So T&G, the same practice as always was, is now a weapon for detractors.
Never mind there is no lead problem, never mind little airplanes fly normal predictable patterns at normal predictable altitudes and don’t buzz your house. I could go on about how the FAA REQUIRES the airport to stay open as it is the base for emergency and firefighting in our region and the next available airport is DIA. Never mind the bazillions it puts into the economy on top of the FAA subsidies it gets. It looks like the next step will be huge, stinkly, hysterical, loud and frivolous lawsuits, because nowadays, that’s what it takes to be a bully.
The solution is obvious. Turn the Donald’s solution around; accept the U.S. as a new, southern Canadian territory and then strike a Royal Commision to investigate and report back to parliament within a reasonable 12 to15 year time frame. It works so well that no one even remembers why it was struck in the first place.
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Ah, classic Canadian humor. 
Well said. Not that I want to poke it with a stick or anything, but maybe the politics of today in the USA will also play a role.
If, as looks likely, the FAA, along with other Fs, is gutted in the name of lower taxes, (it was all in his manifesto) will it leave the way open for the states to operate freely without FAA sticking its nose in?
And are states more likely to ban lead fuel, because the local politicians are more likely to know the folks who object to it?
So, what’s your point. I got curious and looked it up. The dictionary described the phrase, it applies to the article although I do not believe Russ suffers from any debilitating neurological issues. So if you have a specific issue with the term - word salad- please, enlighten us.
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Appreciate your wake-up call Russ. As a C421 driver, I appreciate the fact that the aging fleet of twin-Cessnas that they haven’t made in 40 years will eventually be replaced by turboprops (singles or twins). The owner of one of the ones I fly just put $250k into a new glass panel and another $200k into annuals. So we hope that plane is still around another 20 years!!! Will the Lycoming in the Decathalon I am restoring be replaced with a Rotax? Or will the certified Lycoming engines that have run on the good stuff for decades be forced to run on the untested decaf? Those of us (old timers) who use “low-lead” will dig our heels in and just continue doing what we are doing until we truly can no longer get the juice, despite what California and Colorado are doing. But it could disappear quicker than we think. I think it is going to come down to Lycoming and Continental approving it for ALL their engines.
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Repeating that simple sentence in Russ’ article: I doesn’t matter what we think.
This steamroller is unstoppable. Resistance is futile.
One thing never mentioned is the HUGE advantage to unleaded - you can now run on the cheap side accurate mixture meters with an oxygen sensor and no longer try and guess the air/fuel ratio from secondary effects like EGT and CHT at the low end and this opens the way for closed-loop fuel injection on the high end. Does anyone not driving an antique car worry about starting their car on a cold morning or if it will restart when hot? Not for decades!
The day of no lead is coming and this issue should have been taken care of 20 years ago.
Here is my frustration - We HAD this issue 75% solved decades ago. I remeber buying 80 octane fuel for C-150s and other low compression airplanes and I remember how much trouble they all are on 100LL. If we sold 94 octane avgas, which literally is 100LL minus the lead, a large portion of the fleet would run on it right now. Getting rid of two grades was a big mistake.
Lead is the perfect hammer for anti-GA activists to kill off GA as we know it, rich 1%ers flying over my house coating my children with poison. (of course 1%ers wouldn’t go near a pisten engine airplane, but image is all!)
I hate the idea of throwing airplanes on the scrapheap. I do wonder what improvements could be made to his class of airplane with modern fuel injection and ignition. Theses airplanes run engines hard with 1930s level tech, it may be that 94 octane would work with the same basic engine brought up to the 21st century. My car runs higher boost and higher compression than I would have ever thought possible and on regular gas too!
For better or worse it’s not much of a stretch to imagine that the GOP Congress and President Trump enact legislation to override the EPA endangerment finding or extend the deadline for compliance significantly. Seems right in their wheelhouse.
Sure. “Word salad” is a confused or unintelligible mixture of seemingly random words and phrases. It is most often used to describe a symptom of a neurological or mental disorder.
My point is there’s nothing word salad-ish about Russ’s essay. Compare Orange Hitler’s wild rambling, unhinged and disconnected tyrades to Russ’s work or any other though-out and COHERANT writings for examples Pick another means of attack next time.
there is a solution and that is to use an engine that uses available fuel. the Diesel from Deltahawk is an example… and another is the Rotax line of engines. there is an engine that is being developed for 250 to 360 hp that will run on any available quality Gasoline. all they need is money.
the company is The Engines | ADEPT modern 120 degree 6 and is flying now. they will be at Oshkosh this year I am told with a flying aircraft. It will be competitive in price with existing engines and should fit in almost any aircraft.
look them up. It will solve the lead problem and provide amore efficient engine that we an get fuel for anywhere in the world. 100LL is virtually unavailable in most of the rest of the world.
It was never about low lead Avgas.
Low lead AvGas is the least worry facing communities health (crime, obesity, drugs, bad infrastructure, over crowding, traffic accidents, waste disposal, etc).
Well, since ADennistdi took it upon himself to poke the bear and ask why you complained about my using the phrase “word salad” I suppose I am obligated to weigh in now.
I must confess that I am not qualified to assess Russ’s mental health, much less pronounce a diagnosis on the neurological stamina of his prose. I believe I was straining at a metaphor about the immutable progression of hair on fire being simile to the logic my wife sometimes infers on me when her pants are on fire (not a real metaphor, but metaphorically speaking). And please know that I say this with the utmost respect - in case my wife is listening to me type - but I digress. Or, redress. Or something-else-ess. So…. Keep the greasy side down! 