When last I worked myself into a virtual lather over the glacial non-progress of the stupidly over complicated process of finding an unleaded aviation fuel, I allowed as how I had grown old watching this process. I’m two months older now and still, nothing has happened.
All Aviation regulation has to go through congress now. A congressman needs to submit the ‘G100UL Clean Air Act’ bill. Once all three branches investigate for themselves then they’ll vote on it and then the STC can be issued. This is not what the FAA does anymore. The FAA is an enforcement agency that does surveillance. The FAA wants guns and badges. Time to stop looking to the FAA for advancing aviation.
And all those auto gas STC holders are screwed too after Biden was bought off to eventually mandate ethanol in all auto fuels.
100LL is now $7.08 gallon here in this state, how much higher can it go? Talk about throwing sand in the gears, people are already pissed about car/truck fuel prices. I think the bottom line is nobody is really in charge of the current administration starting with Biden and right now this bunch has 6 months to cram as much garbage through as humanly possible before the gate slams shut. Leaded avgas which accounts for a very very small percentage of overall fuel use is probably the least of their (FAA) worries and who wants to stick their neck out and have another crisis. Can’t even find oil filters now for Gawed sake’s.
George Braly is in Oklahoma. Can’t he get Senator Inhofe to tackle this problem? Inhofe knows how to handle the FAA.
“Why do we even continue to put up with this from our government agencies. It’s truly a puzzle.”
Two reasons:
As long as we keep electing self-serving, freedom-hating morons, things only will get worse. Our national fate already may be unrecoverable.
In 1961, John Kennedy said: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
Sixty-plus years later, the naked, unembarassed American ethos is “What’s in it for me?”
Personal responsibility and its consequent leavening shame have become extinct.
Today is D-Day. Consider two things:
And this is “progress?” Woe betide us, and all of humanity.
George Braly has the patience of Job, and must have a very stable source of funding to support his 12 year (and counting) crusade. GAMI’s efforts are fueled by business decisions; they hope to be the first to find the giant pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. That pot of gold will be filled by you and me and everyone else who pays even more for G100UL than we are now paying for 100LL. So while George seems like a great guy and I respect his dedication, I am personally in no rush for even more expensive avgas.
One seemingly simple (to simple-minded me) solution would be to quit requiring airplanes that don’t need lead to include it in their fuel. The 100LL product has been forced down the throats of carburetors that don’t need that level of octane performance.
If a selector-valve can be placed in an airplane then one can be placed on a fuel-delivery hose which would introduce the lead/TEL into the fuel AT THE PUMP…. or NOT. Then all the little training and personal airplanes that can operate on UL-AvGas can have it and those who need the full 100 OCT w/TEL fuel can also.
And quit looking for political scapegoats. Biden wasn’t prez for the vast majority of the problem and Inhofe is retiring/retired and should have years ago when he landed on a closed runway and nearly killed workers on it.
With TWO federal alphabet agencies, FAA and EPA, which operate at comparable levels of inflexibility, iinvolved in the issue, it’s almost incomprehensible that anything will proceed in a timely manner. “Loving the problem” - perfect description. The feds have and will always have real problems moving beyond Square One.
Amen.
A few years ago I read a really good book about Lindbergh. It is “The Flight of the Century: Charles Lindbergh and the rise of American Aviation”. It is by Thomas Kessner. It is an excellent read.
Much more than the title implies, this book is about aviation.
Chapter 9 in particular looks at the early role of the FAA (CAA at the time). According to the book, the FAA was basically conceived to keep small operators out of the aviation business–in the name of safety of course. Reading it helped me understand how the FAA got to where it is. It actually started out that way, by design.
Two notes on Paul B’s take:
Agreed, and there is nowhere else on the globe to run to.
the only real solution is for us to write our congressman. expecting a government bureaucrat to take a risk is impossible. If you look at their situation, bureaucrats can only lose their job for a decision. doing something risky will cause them to be fired. it is much safer for your job to say no than to say yes.
write your congressman
Now the FAA has another excuse to self justify their jobs. Peter Boot-a-Judge can now show his true incompetence as a public administer and go on with his real job:eliminate GA, add to inflation, appoint more cronies, and squeeze more money out of GA providers for the Biden campaign funds. The Idea of leaving this to be solved by more political involvement scares me.
I’ll gladly pay slightly more for unleaded 100 octane fuel. It will mean not having to worry about lead-fouled spark plugs, and the wasted time and money on cleaning/replacing them. It will also mean we can switch to synthetic oils and not have to change the oil as often. There are many benefits to getting rid of lead even ignoring any potential health/environmental issues. And I suspect that when produced in volume, the cost differential will be lowered somewhat.
Oh!
Many areas were offering high octane ground vehicle fuel without ethanol, as rule was for average across all sales and highest octane was a small proportion of sales.
Oh!
Many areas were offering high octane ground vehicle fuel without ethanol, as rule was for average across all sales and highest octane was a small proportion of sales.
But eco-goons are obsessive.