Mooney_Driver wrote:
Yet it is a wake up call to many who think types like that are limited to Europe.
Nothing to wake up to. “Types like that” have always existed and are in no way limited to aviation. You just roll your eyes and move on.
(I recall a Swedish MP in the 1970s who wanted to outlaw parabolic antennas because satellite TV channels were not subject to Swedish legislation. People rolled their eyes and nothing more happened.)
chflyer wrote:
This will never happen.
I agree. Yet it is a wake up call to many who think types like that are limited to Europe.
This will never happen. As the first commentor to the Avweb article said “Of course sensible people will just avoid the state entirely”. The US is in the fortunate position of having so much business dependent on GA that users can talk with their wallets. One of the NE states, Vermont or New Hampshire, passed a tax law related to GA some years ago. Aviation businesses moved out of the state en-masse and GA traffic dropped dramatically. The law was quickly repealed, but the damage was done and it took quite a while for aviation to get back to “normal”.
Funny how governments exempt themselves from regulations they find burdensome (but want to inflict on everyone else).
Avweb has now commented on this.
https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/1000-landing-fee-proposed-for-massachusetts-private-aircraft
[ huge URL truncated ]
Buckerfan wrote:
there will be a massive political backlash and new parties will rise to implement more sensible and sound policies
Or we will get more of what the US have: massively split population and contested elections.
And quite possibly the rise of parties which get more and more extreme on the opposing sides. I would not be surprised if the climate change politics may lead towards civil unrest or even civil war in some places.
Or you could recognise that all the scare stories about “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming” are just plain wrong.
The simple facts are that:
1. since the 1970s global temperatures have risen, and yes I agree that most likely that SOME of the rise may be due to rising CO2 levels
2. but, the rate of rise is much slower than predicted by the hundreds of ‘climate models’
3. there has been no overall global increase in predicted expected catastrophes – droughts, fires, floods, hurricanes, climate induced migration, disease, countries sinking etc etc
4. on the other hand the increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere has had VERY positive effects so far – increased plant growth, crop yields and extent of vegetation in marginal areas (eg the Sahel)
5. the cost of mitigating the possible future effects are MUCH lower than the cost of decarbonising
6. China is taking advantage of the West’s current climate stupidity to accelerate their growing economic relative strength and are laughing at us with no intention of crippling their own economies
7. Once governments truly start to take away such essentials and luxuries as gas fired home heating, cars that can make long trips and trucks that can haul loads, foreign holidays there will be a massive political backlash and new parties will rise to implement more sensible and sound policies
Happy to provide evidence for all the above when I have more time
A lot of our planes can actually use UL91. That Avgas is cheaper and, more importantly, is unleaded. But it is not available widely, because it takes another pump, tank and infrastructure. For me, it would be one way to go for airplanes which can not fly on Mogas but still want to go away from leaded fuel.
I know that there are still quite a few engines which can’t use UL91 but most of the smaller compression engines can and without any mod or STC. That is a distinctive advantage over Mogas.
dublinpilot wrote:
When petrol is largely gone, then so will be AVGAS. I don’t believe AVGAS is produced in sufficient volumes to justify its separate production when petrol is gone.
AFAIU the production of AVGAS has nothing to do with the production of petrol for cars. AVGAS is already produced separately. (Which explains the high price (pre-tax) compared with petrol.)
dublinpilot wrote:
I don’t believe AVGAS is produced in sufficient volumes to justify its separate production when petrol is gone.
This sentence is wandering around since, I don’t know, at least the 1970s. And it’s coming and it’s going. It is always the same: We have only 10 years to go. AVGAS will be out soon!
I heard pilots discussing about that already when I was a young boy, and someone tried to explain to me the differences about these fuels and that it’s just so small an amount of AVGAS that they won’t produce it any longer.
We’ll see about what’s coming then. It will be produced when you can make money on it – and when it’s not legally prohibited. Whether you (we) want to pay 4 or 6 or even 10 Euros per liter, that’s another question. And then it may be, that AVGAS is only produced on some days a month. But I don’t think that we will note it that much.
dublinpilot wrote:
Better to prepare for it and have a way forward.
To that I fully agree. There have evolved some options which might save all the GA from restrictions. I think the most important thing with GA is, that when seen from outside that effort is visible on reducing pollution. The Diesel engines are a good step on this – who knows there might be retrofit available for more planes soon (and I would believe no one who tells me that Jet A1 will perish in the next 50 years). The Rotax engines can be used with very low fuel consumption, and on car gas, and there are many designs up to twin Rotax. The effort in electric flying is another good step.
Sooner or later I think that school flying could be done on electric “fuel”, this also eliminates all the flying, where the red knob is intentionally not touched at all. But as I said, if we are willing to pay the price, there will always be AVGAS.
