U2oSH Update - autogas at oshkosh?

AFC directors, supported by the club's sponsor U-Fuel, continue plans for the "Unleaded to Oshkosh" event this coming July. A forum celebrating the 30th anniversary of the FAA's approval of the first autogas STC in 1982 is planned for Thursday morning, July 26th. U-Fuel's display near ConocoPhillips Square will serve as a headquarters for participants to receive a special gift and to sign up for awards to be presented at the forum on Thursday. An AFC member recently reported that lead-free, ethanol-free autogas has been available in the Ultralight area in past years; we're looking into general sales of autogas during the entire week. Numerous airports in the Oshkosh area have offered autogas for years, as described in this article. Stay tuned for more details.

Park Township Airport adding autogas

We recently heard from Doug Formsma, airport commissioner for the Park Township Airport (KHLM) in Holland, MI that they plan to offer lead-free, ethanol-free autogas later this year. Located on Lake Michigan's beautiful eastern shore, the airport has seen a decline in flying activity as avgas prices have climbed in the recent past. Formsma and his colleagues plan to add autogas to lower the cost of flying as part of their efforts to support sport aviation in their area.  Thanks go to Doug and others on our behalf. If your travel plans take you to the Holland, MI area, be sure to buy some autogas at Park Township.

Central Maine airport reports

Kristina Wallace, spokeswoman for the Central Maine Airport in Norrdigewock, sends us the following news: "As summer approaches, we are excited to await the next shipment of, what is described by our distributor as 'summer gas'. At this time, the premium grade (our 91 octane) fuel is sold in Canada as a non E10 fuel. We expect our next shipment mid May or possibly early June. This continues to be available to us from May through September each year. Hopefully it will become available year round, sometime in the near future."  Thanks, Kristina!

Air Plains making progress with ADI

Last month, AFC Directors Kent Misegades and Todd Petersen paid a visit to the engine STC experts Air Plains in Wellington, KS. The company is nearing completion of modernization of Petersen's Anti-Detonant Injection (ADI) system previously certified by the FAA for many models of the Beech 58 Baron, Cessna 188 AgTruck and Cesnna 210 aircraft. ADI automatically injects a small amount of a water/methanol mixture into the engine during peak performance to prevent detonation. With ADI, virtually any engine now requiring 100LL leaded avgas could operate on premium, lead-free, ethanol-free autogas. While visiting the company in March, we watched tests on a Continental IO-520 engine, used to power many high-performance single and twin aircraft that currently require 100LL.  For more details, contact Katie Church at Air Plains, 1-800-752-8481.

Aviation Fuels 101 - Recent News from GAfuels

Two AFC Directors, Dean Billing of Sisters, OR and Kent Misegades of Cary, NC, co-author the GAfuels blog at General Aviation News. Below are links to some of their recent postings on issues related to aviation fuels.

ULPower’s new 6-cylinder autogas engines, April 3rd, 2012

The FBO fuel sales model is broken and anti-competitive, March 18th, 2012

New autogas supplier for Virginia and North Carolina, March 15th, 2012

Map of airports with autogas now online, March 12th, 2012