Sunday, August 15, 2010
Approved some comments in old posts
Sorry for not being very active on this blog lately because I have been busy (work, summer vacation (I have been busy (work, current airplane, summer vacation etc.). I noticed that there were plenty of not yet approved comments. Sorry for the delay, I have been busy. Your comments are now approved and after you have been approved once, I think you can comment without prior approval in the future. Thanks for writing comments!
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3 comments:
I saw some comments about 100LL going away. There is a substitute I've been working with, called 100SF, for the Swift Fuel version. It is better than 100LL; higher octane( 2" higher manifold pressure before detonation), 10-15% lower fuel consumption, a drop in replacement, which can be made from a variety of biomass materials. It should get ASTM certification in about another year, and is a true drop in replacement.
Sounds good but, there is the problem:
- every one of the AVGAS/100LL resellers are close to discontinuing or have discontinued already in Finland, and if a replacement comes (another type of AVGAS), it can exist in large markets like USA, but it most likely will not become available in Finland and other Northern European countries simply because nobody will sell it because the demand is on their scale low. T
he market for few hundred planes is such low that the fuel suppliers see it unprofitable market. In this market it does not matter how nice the replacement would be, because it simply wont happen unless you become a supplier for yourself for this niche market.
Today's status is:
- ST1 has discontinued 100LL supply.
- Neste is discontinuing, the last refueling points will close this year.
- Just heard that even Shell is selling their tanks to flying clubs.
=> this means that the 100LL supply will completely die because these were all the suppliers.
So the alternatives for future are (that will still exist):
- Autogas with ethanol content and low octane (self-supply with canisters)
- diesel
- Jet-A1
By the way; by all means, if you can find supplier for the 100SF to sparsely populated countries in Northern Europe and the supplier would agree to not go bankrupt and to not discontinue this niche market, and the replacement would have competitive cost (which means, lower cost than 100LL at the moment, around the price point of Shell V-Power would be great), it could be a good idea for example for the efficiency reasons and for those classic engines that require high octane (like TSIO-550).
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