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dougalm | 3 years ago

Is it worth trying to apply pressure at the local level? I read that Santa Clara County banned 100LL in January.

I have young kids. We live near Hanscom Field and spend a lot of time near Barnstable Airport. Should we try writing our local airports/cities/counties?

At Barnstable Airport, the big operator is Cape Air. They make a big show of being green, so maybe they'd want to be early adopters of G100UL. Does anyone know if the existing G100UL STC applies to Cape Air's fleet? Could they switch to it if they wanted to?

discuss

order

sokoloff|3 years ago

Cape Air's piston fleet is Cessna 402Cs, using the TCM TSIO-520-VB engines. Those engines are not on the G100UL STC Approved Model List.

https://download.aopa.org/advocacy/2021/SE01966WI_AML-Amd1.p...

https://gami.com/g100ul/GAMI_Q_and_A.pdf

Adding to the data above some of my personal opinion, which was informed by visiting GAMI's Ada, OK facility, taking the APS course (taught by the GAMI principal engineer), and having seen the fuel demonstrated on the higher-strung TIO-540 Navajo engine: that the 402C's engines would run just fine on G100UL without operational limitations, but as above they cannot legally do that today.

dougalm|3 years ago

That's very helpful. Thanks for explaining! It looks like the Lycoming O-540 engines on Cape Air's new Tecnam Travellers aren't on the list either.

I'm glad you think that G100UL should work in the Cessna engines and it's "just" a bureaucratic issue. Do you have any sense of what the current blocker to approval is? I found Paul Bertorelli's AVweb article a bit hard to follow.

ericpauley|3 years ago

Note: this is the current model list. The new proposed AML that the FAA is supposedly about to sign off includes all engines approved for 100LL.

toomuchtodo|3 years ago

I would complain to anyone who will listen. The health effects of lead exposure are well known, and a suitable replacement is available. Any continued combustion of leaded avgas is out of apathy and laziness. The FAA is dragging their feet because there is no cost to them to do so.

hutzlibu|3 years ago

I know nothing of the technical details, so you are saying, no one would need to change anything with their engines etc and just switch to leadfree gasoline?

ryandrake|3 years ago

(Disclaimer: am a pilot)

I think applying local pressure (I.e. the Santa Clara approach) will only annoy pilots and get their political associations (AOPA, EAA, etc.) to dig in and fight bans and closures. In general, pilots of small planes desperately want to switch away from leaded gasoline too! We all want the same thing. I have a family that I don’t want lead poisoned, too. But I’m not going to simply stop flying airplanes indefinitely waiting for the FAA to get its shit together.

Trying to get 100LL banned is like those protestors blocking rush hour traffic to advocate for their cause—it is unlikely to be effective, and it more likely just makes any potential allies into enemies.

dougalm|3 years ago

Thank you, that's really helpful context. I can easily imagine that failure mode playing out. The last thing we need is for it to become some kind of culture war.

Maybe local pressure would be more appropriate once the FAA approves G100UL for all engines. Then it could be about encouraging airports to make sure G100UL is actually available, and getting airlines like Cape Air to switch over their fleets.