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Leaded Avgas reducing flight safety?

That means you have the right to pollute the environment but 99% of the population doesn't? You can burn your car tyres in the garden because nobody else does it and thus the environment is not harmed on a global scale?

I really dislike having to deal with TEL on a regular basis, but realistically if you wanted to spend a billion dollars on improving the environment, there would undoubtedly be better ways to go. Ditto for cadmium on airframes. The comparison with burning tyres is poor, because there are easy alternative ways of getting rid of them, whereas with aviation the situation is a lot more complex. I wouldn't want to see lots of old airframes condemned en-masse for both environmental and sentimental reasons, which might happen if someone pulled the plug on 100LL too precipitously.

The main people likely to be affected by TEL are engineers, pilots, and to a lesser extent, passengers. For this reason I would like to have access to unleaded fuel. Hopefully someone will come up with 100UL - there are a few products in the pipeline.

The main people likely to be affected by TEL are engineers, pilots, and to a lesser extent, passengers. For this reason I would like to have access to unleaded fuel. Hopefully someone will come up with 100UL - there are a few products in the pipeline.

I'd agree that those handling aviation fuel directly are probably the only ones who should rationally care about its makeup. For myself, given a choice between handling 100LL with 0.4 grams/liter TEL or modern unleaded (auto) fuel with its blend of benzene and toluene content plus possible other octane boosting constituents like MTBE, I'd personally choose 100LL every time.

The only interest I have in unleaded fuel relative to leaded fuel is in keeping the spark plugs and other engine components clean. Although my engines were run for about 15 years on old style unleaded auto fuel, which is no longer available without alcohol in my area due to environmental regulations that now make me use 100LL, probably the best fuel overall was low lead 80/87. That also hasn't been available for 10-15 years.

Tetra-Ethyl lead is carcinogenic too. I don't know whether 0.6% Benzene or 0.04% TetraEthyl lead would be more likely to cause a cancer and I doubt whether anybody does (or will do the research now it's largely banned). However TEL is neurotoxic without a doubt, even at extremely low levels and probably more deleterious environmentally.

Personally I think I'd rather go with the benzene, or ideally one of the alternatives. It's a shame Ethanol and aeroplanes don't mix, even when you put it in the fuel tank rather than the pilot.

TEL content in 100LL is indeed roughly 0.4 grams/liter (or 0.05%) but benzene is often up to 1% or 1.5%. I'll take the lead if I'm handling the stuff, and skip the benzine and toluene.

I don't think the exhaust from aircraft has the slightest effect on public health. In Europe, many airports (most? you decide) don't have 400 liters of 100LL burned within the area every day... which would be 160 grams of lead over quite a number of square kilometers.

Everybody influences others in living their life, in both a positive and negative way. To do otherwise is to be dead. I think the trick is to make sure the positives of my existence outweigh the negatives. Being figuratively dead is of no interest to me.

Ciao

Once environmental policy gets wrapped up in politics (when isn't it?) logic goes out of the window.

Look at the EU ROHS/REACH stuff about eliminating firstly lead and then a couple of hundred arbitrarily chosen substances which nobody has ever heard of, from electronics.

Now we have to solder with lead-free solder which only barely just about works. It works well enough for consumer stuff which gets scrapped in a few years...

For hand soldering, the only solder which works at all costs 10x more (£42/0.5kg v. £4) because it contains silver. We tested about 30 solders...

When lead free soldering originally came in, exemptions were created for military, medical, "control and monitoring" (very useful that one!) and, wait for it, "internet switching equipment"! What a joke. Cynical exemptions for stuff which "has" to work.

After all that, I don't think anybody has found evidence that lead from electronics reaches the food chain...

There are now plenty of jobs for people generating long documents with long lists of substances which everybody has to sign and pass on, before anybody will buy from you.

The US has a new one now: "conflict minerals". Hey, how can you tell? But everybody has to sign that one, too.

The great thing about modern society is that lazy people are never out of work if they know how to identify the income streams. Karl Marx would have loved it. There is always a nice job creating bandwagon on its way.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I wouldn't want to see lots of old airframes condemned en-masse for both environmental and sentimental reasons, which might happen if someone pulled the plug on 100LL too precipitously.

Well, it's hardly what you could call precipitously. The GA industry has been on notice since the late 80's/early 90's to find an alternative to leaded avgas, and were given a conditional exemption from the leaded fuel bans enacted at the time. SInce then, GA has basically taken the p*ss and ignored the issue, presumably hoping it will go away. In this increasingly environmentally sensitive world, I am certain there will come a time when the powers that be will lose patience, and if a precipitous ban is imposed, sadly I don't think GA will deserve any sympathy.

The GA industry has been on notice since the late 80's/early 90's

True, but not on what most in the business would call "credible notice".

The so-called tree-huggers run so many bandwagons concurrently, with many of them totally emotive and discredited crap, that if one took notice of everything we would all live off our little vegetable patches, ride horses, and get power from little wind turbines.

Then they would complain about the smoke from the wood fires

Something will happen, with the USA leading the way, but until there is a "100UL" which works in the turbocharged fleet, we don't have a solution at all - irrespective of what the "I am allright Jack" community says.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

For hand soldering, the only solder which works at all costs 10x more (£42/0.5kg v. £4) because it contains silver. We tested about 30 solders...

I went through a complete 0.5kg reel of lead free/silver free solder and while I could make it work it wasn't what I call "fun" although I did manage to make it work. I've started using the £42 reels with silver in them now, and I can happily hand solder fine pitch SMD with it all day long.

Am I particularly upset about the price? No, not really. I'd prefer if it were £4, but the cost of the solder used on any particular board is still pennies. What I care about more is not the cost of a reel of solder, but the tin whiskers issue in consumer gear. In going to lead-free solder it may just mean more consumer items break down and get thrown away leading to the unintended consequences of ROHS making things worse for the environment, not better.

Andreas IOM

The tin whisker issue seems to have gone quiet.

Originally, Swatch threatened to close their watch business but evidently they found a way

I don't know if some new composition has been found (SMT reflow soldering doesn't normally use silver loaded solder - I was at the contractor this morning and inspected some of the work) or if everybody prefers to not advertise that due to EU regs their products will stop working after X years (which would be awfully bad PR even if it is true - nobody is going to do a Gerald Ratner).

I think the industry has probably sidestepped the whisker issue by dropping the trend to ever finer pin spacings (TSOPs were heading for ~0.4mm pitch) and moving to BGA packages whose ball spacing is fairly generous.

I agree the cost per PCB is not significant. But we still find it doesn't flow, on large items like brass bush PCB supports. The result is "OK-ish" but looks crap.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

but until there is a "100UL" which works in the turbocharged fleet

G100UL doesn't? It seems to me it's more about politics than chemistry why G100UL hasn't been approved

LSZK, Switzerland
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