On the one hand, I'm concerned that such a finding may well be used as a chance to twist the knife by those who just don't like us or our airplanes, regardless of any environmental impacts they may or may not have.
On the other hand, maybe it'll light a fire under someone's rear end to finally approve and/or distribute the approved alternative fuels.
On the gripping hand, I'm setting my RV up to be compatible with E10 mogas...
There's significant, major differences between avgas and autofuel besides lead. And rebuilding an airplane engine so it doesn't need lead -- how? What's your solution?
As noted:
Lead is a contaminent in most engines & for spark plugs.
Once the octane problem is managed by other means, lead has no purpose in an IC engine.
Outside of perhaps valve seats on a handful of certain engines, there are already fuels out there of sufficient octane rating and performance to be full drop-in replacements for 100LL. The
approval was by blanket STC rather than full approval because apparently the density is a couple percent higher than for 100LL and that slightly changes the W&B calculations. But there's no engine performance changes.
Now if you're talking about running lower octane, that depends on the engine. Some engines might be happy as-is, some might need lower-compression pistons.
Some of us are also planning on (or running) E10 gas from the corner gas station. Considerations there include not only the lower octane, but use of ethanol-tolerant materials (seals, gaskets, hoses, fuel tanks, etc) and more caution with the fuel system to prevent vapor lock at high temperatures and/or altitudes.
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