Small airplanes still use a leaded aviation fuel known as Avgas. I think of that every time I drive by the airport in the middle of Renton, WA right next to the lake.
https://generalaviationnews.com/2019/06/06/the-future-of-unl...
Fuel supplied lead is a 99.86% solved problem which is solving itself.
Congress has been funding a program to develop lead free fuel which can safely power aviation piston engines, it is ongoing. Intermediate results are largely not available because it is required to protect all commercial entities participating. https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/avgas/
Here is a nice article from someone involved in avgas lead removal: https://www.avweb.com/insider/going-to-the-moon-was-easy-com...
Yes, while total use of leaded fuel now makes up a tiny percentage, it is still measurably significant to the people who live in the flight path of a municipal airport.
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2021/08/18/reid-hillview-a...
Those aircraft will not disappear, they will just move to SJC a few miles away and pollute just as much.
I seriously doubt that, if the lead was removed overnight, they would change their minds and stop complaining about the airport. This NIMBY fight is older than that.
I feel similarly about my HOA who complains about noise pollution from SJC. The airport predates the houses by decades but now it is suddenly a problem.
There should be far more outrage about lead in avgas than there is today - maybe then the FAA and EPA would stop bickering and issue some new regulation. Noone wants to take responsibility for the monetary damage and possible disasters stemming from the decision to phase out lead, so decades later we are still looking for the perfect avgas replacement.
Meanwhile, European planes are transitioning to other fuels. Either Jet-A or motor gas. Diamond has developed great engines, but when their aircraft are sold in the US, guess which engines they use? People will ask specifically for lead burning Lycoming or Continental. If there was a penalty for doing that, maybe this would change.
The only difference in design besides those oil coolers was their gearbox, which was a joke from day one. Firstly, diesel produces RPMs similar to what a small aircraft propeller wants so even having a gearbox is either a revenue-generating design intended to fail, or an exercise in stupidity. You can tell me which, I honestly don't know.
Nor has Diamond developed great aircraft in other aspects, either. Their stick rather than a yoke design was also a cost-cutter, but no one wants to ride around with a piece of metal hitting them in the balls, either. Socata and Cirrus did a much better job of interior design than Diamond, which is why they're still making ever-more-complex airplanes, and Diamond is flirting with bankruptcy.
The solution to general aviation getting rid of leaded gas is someone to make small turbines, and the only thing holding that back is the FAA.
I am not qualified to comment on the need of the gearbox. I would suspect that neither are you.
> their stick rather than a yoke design was also a cost-cutter, but no one wants to ride around with a piece of metal hitting them in the balls, either.
The large numbers of people flying RV10s seem to disagree. Diamond doesn't have a monopoly on the center stick. Passengers may not like the floor mounted stick, but pilots? Meh. The passenger stick is removable on the DA42 and 62.
You can't seriously take a Diamond Twinstar and tell me that's not a great aircraft.
> The solution to general aviation getting rid of leaded gas is someone to make small turbines
Right, I can picture it right now, a C172 with a turbine engine. Maintenance and fuel requirements aren't even in the same league, no matter how small this turbine is.
As shown elsewhere in this thread, the lead-free, drop-in replacement has been approved.
A run-up is a grand total of 4 inputs even on a gas engine with 2 ignition circuits (power, prop pitch, ignition 1, ignition 2). Automating this is not rocket science, it's a gimmick. Yes, the Diamond diesel is a Mercedes taxi cab diesel with an aftermarket gearbox and oil cooler.
> The large numbers of people flying RV10s seem to disagree.
Experimental aircraft are not an apples/apples comparison to certified aircraft, they are just barely airworthy.
> Right, I can picture it right now, a C172 with a turbine engine. Maintenance and fuel requirements aren't even in the same league, no matter how small this turbine is.
Because of the FAA. The cost to get an appointment with them prices most would-be competitors out of the market. The FAA exists to protect airline and defense contractor monopolies, period.
Speaking of RV10s....
https://www.kitplanes.com/turbine-powered-rv-10/
quote from the article:
> What does TSG want for the firewall-forward package it is developing on the RV-10 (come on, I know you want to know)? “We are hoping to offer it for between $168,000 and $175,000 USD.”
From its quoted operating cost of 20-25 gallons per hour that's doable. The last gas piston single I owned held 92 gallons and burned 19 per hour in cruise (a turbo Lycoming 540). Range would be a tradeoff, because of the increased weight of the fuel, but the bigger hindrance is weight and balance mismatches, which brings us full circle to my original point:
The entire industry has been held teetering on the verge of bankruptcy by the FAA for the last 40 years. And by "FAA" I mean their corporate and military "customers" as they refer to them when emails get subpoenaed. No one in their right mind would design new light GA airplanes (Cirrus and Socata included). All of the domestic US manufacturers have either quit or gotten the "Goldman Sachs special" (bought, loaded with debt, intentionally bankrupted, and then sold off to Textron for the meager parts supply chain profits).
Flying machines were a great idea, unfortunately they were invented in a shithole country...
A giant aircraft requires a giant amount of fuel, a giant runway and a pilot who has spent a whole lot of hours flying non-commercially. Without GA and small planes, we might also not have sustainable commercial-aviation.
My CFI took off to go work for the airlines because of increased demand several months ago. Without GA he may not have had an opportunity to stay with aviation at all. One can not learn everything needed to fly an aircraft in a simulator.
Source: I fly at KRHV
When I was doing my research on ULPower engines (which can burn 100LL, but they would prefer non-leaded), there were very few airports who offered unleaded fuel (UL94). I think, San Carlos / KSQL was the only one I found?
I wonder what KRHV closure would mean for unleaded fuel? So everybody would just switch back to 100LL? How is that supposed to help?
Wouldn't be more practical (from the point of lead pollution) to enforce non-leaded fuels in those small airports instead? My cursory research shows that lot (?) of these light planes (and, perhaps, the majority of the trainer/weekend hobby aircrafts) would happily burn non-leaded fuel (UL94, for instance), with corresponding STC.
Definitely. It solves one problem.
It doesn't solve the "this airport takes space that could be used for parking lots" problem.
Ironically, "protecting commercial interests" is why the whole lead fuel catastrophe came to be.
Essentially hobby aviation is completely stuck in the 1970s and getting the engines modernized would be "cost prohibitive".
Since wealthy people still want to play around in planes they get to rain lead on our heads.
The wealthy are in jets or turbo props which don't use leaded gas.
Then the super-rich can continue to fly, paying the nation for the economic and health effects they're causing, but regular hobbyists will have to ground their planes till unleaded avgas is available.
Should be easy-ish to enforce, because planes and flight plans are registered, and anyone paying no tax and flying a lot ought to be easy to catch.
'Hobbyists' have been waiting for lead free avgas for decades. You should just crush their planes while you are at it.
While the super rich do whatever they want? By the way, if you are super-rich, you are probably burning Jet-A anyway, not AVGAS.
The real fix is to just issue the damn regulation and provide some incentives. Engines have to be overhauled and replaced periodically anyways. Make it easier to recertify aircraft, provide a path for aircraft that no longer have the original manufacturer around. Give incentives for small airports to stock on whatever the proposed avgas replacement is until the demand catches up.
> flight plans are registered
No they aren't. No requirement for flight plans in VFR.
If you are proposing such harsh legislation, you should at least try to learn something about the subject matter.
The industry is rapidly trying to move to do two things, 1. remove lead from the fuel, this is noted by other commenters. And 2. Pushing for more electric GA.
Pilots don't exactly like getting their hands covered in lead when they check fuel, much less dumping it into the atmosphere when they fly, but it's still an unfortunate fact of life. Times are absolutely changing though, and the future looks bright.
If banning leaded gas leads to qualified pilot shortage, the industry only has itself to blame for failing to train the people it needs.
Lufthansa at least (and maybe most big euro flag carriers?) runs its own “ab initio” training, where it takes non-pilots and makes them into pilots with a job.
Lufthansa has warned cadets they won’t need to hire for a few years: https://www.businessinsider.com/in-crisis-lufthansa-restruct...
Not sure if there’s a shortage of skilled pilots today as flight counts are still down like 20% in USA vs 2019, and generally a sharper decline elsewhere.
Or having their spark plugs fouled by the same lead.
Drop in replacement, no engine changes, no performance changes, no compatibility issues with storage tanks, pipelines, anything.
They are claiming it will even increase time between overhauls, prolong spark plug life, maybe even increase engine life and require less oil changes.
Seems more costly though. But if the above materializes it might offset the costs too.
That sounds like the holy grail - if more airframes are issued STCs
True. But irrelevant if most aircraft cannot use it.
> That certification helps people convert obsolete aircraft
Obsolete? Is a Cirrus SR-22 obsolete?
> The federal government should outlaw leaded aviation fuels immediately and let the hobby aviation community figure out how to proceed from there.
The government also uses planes. Whole industries use piston planes. And helicopters. Why are you singling out 'hobby' aircraft?
Mind you, experimental aircraft have been able to use unleaded fuels (including automotive gasoline) for a while now. The reason most can't is that there were no fuels certified for use in their aircraft. Certification requirements come from the government, so the government has to fix it.
Yes, the naturally-aspirated SR22 that requires 100LL is obsolete. The turbocharged SR22T that can use unleaded is not.
One of the nice things about having principled beliefs is the ability to unambiguously answer simple questions.
Banning unleaded fuel without a replacement would have been heavy handed and short sighted. The government should be working with industry partners to develop a suitable replacement -- as G100UL was -- and subsidize the fuel costs to make the more expensive replacement the same cost as leaded fuel.