Ian

I don't know, someone with greater knowledge of the industry might have more of an idea. One of my uncles was an engineer working in Kurnell but that's no longer a refinery. While fossil fuels mightn't be fashionable, we're still a long way from being able to do without them. Whether this crunch puts refineries and ammonia production back onto the essential industry table is yet to be seen.

The current fuel crisis is caused by an ill considered attack by the US and Israel on Iran which has taken a significant portion of the worlds fuel supply out of circulation. This has made prices jump considerably, but not as much as many market pudits expected. Some people expected the price would rise to over $150/barrel in this situation. One arguments is TACO, Trump Alway Chickens Out. Trump appears to be looking for an exit strategy however to all appearances the Iranians look like they've got a firm hold of Trumps balls and won't let go. They want reparations and a toll system on the strait which would be extremely humiliating for Trump. So Trump's options are to accept a humiliating withdrawal and try to paint failure as success or do a full ground operation and force regime change. So things would have to get far worse for Trump to accept the former, and if he does the latter the strait won't be open for an extended period. From an aviation point of view, it will be interesting, in the Chinese curse definition, to see what happens to GA fuel supplies. Viva energy which makes avgas in Australia in Geelong, is increasing production of of this plant provide greater supplies of petroleum products, but what does this mean for GA aviation? Does the balanced plant argument mean more avgas, or will maximising production of essential fuels results in a squeeze in the sector. It might be a good time to review the fuel flexibility of your engines. I know that many flight schools use mogas purely for economic and maintenance reasons but more generally what options does the GA fleet have.

I acknowledge that the electrification of road freight transport has a way to go, but I suspect that economics will drive this at some point and the infrastructure will catch up. I own both an ICE car and an electric one. I don't think that I will buy another ICE one because electric vehicles are just better. Drive one for a month and it will change you mind. I didn't want my wife to buy one but my sons convinced her it was the way to go. I was 100% wrong, happy to admit it. 95% of the time I charge at home. When I'm away I charge using power points, yeah it takes most of a night but it's generally enough and most hotels, family and friends will do it for free. (I'll generally throw $20 at them) I drive on a 1000km trip about once a once a month across regional areas, that's 2000km return. I usually take my wife's car, if she'll let me because as I said it's better The only issue is poorly maintained chargers where it took 20 goes plugging it in before it activated. ICE cars will go the way of horses, at some point people will only own them for fun, not work. I like both horses and ICE cars, but do they really make sense anymore? And yeah yeah, I get the towing a caravan bit, but that too will change. On long

While these aren't perfect studies generally show about an 80% reduction in GCG compared to fossil diesel. Alcohol based fuels are slightly lower. But these sources lean into agriculture which is an Australian strength and they also provide fuel security. We still need liquid fuels for planes, the maths simply doesn't work for batteries and hydrogen is silly. What we're finding now is that fuel security matters.

Australia is reliant on foreign sources for crude and for refined fuel. We haven't developed fossil fuel resources or alternatives such as biodiesel of alcohol. When scarity makes the price of fuel rises, discretionary uses decline. The Grey nomads will stay closer to home, more people will catch public transport, deliveries will be bundled into larger bundles. The Government hasn't been making money from the increased price of fuel. Fuel excise is a flat rate per litre, saying otherwise is simply braying your ignorance to your peers. If you want to blame someone blame Trump and his cronies. His idiotic fumblings threatens the world's economy.

Fair point however it's actually a combination of the two. Modern vehicle engines are built to far higher tolerances and the efficacy of liquid cooling allows the use of very low clearances in engine operation from start to shutdown. Alloy choices such as hyper eutectic alloys for pistons have low expansion rates so you don't have pistons slapping and leaking when the engines cold. Debateable. Air cooling is thermodynamically more efficient, however liquid cooling provides far greater control and allows the transfer of heat from the engine to areas where is it easier to push into the environment. In reality it's a design issue, and a particular design is either effective or not. Well design radiator drag is lower than air cooling. This was demonstrated numerous times in WW2. But it required significant domain expertise to do this effectively. Yes there are risks associated with extra complexity however there are also benefits. Current airplane engines have numerous defects which have been designed out of modern automotive engines. They're also almost an order of magnitude cheaper as a rule.

There is nothing wrong with a process which makes valve quickly, consistently to a standard. If the parts aren't failing in production they're good enough. Lycoming has issued recalls for defective crankshafts due to poor quality controls in their subcontractors many of which failed in flight prior to the recall. https://www.lycoming.com/content/service-bulletin-no-566 Sintered components are cheaper because they need less machining and waste less material. While there have been failures of sintered component there have been many sintered gears and conrods which have lasted the lifetime of engines. If an engine component is designed or manufactured poorly it will likely fail in production, it doesn't matter if it is sintered or forged. At then end of the day GA aircraft engines are 1950 technology and it shows. The alloys they're made from are no longer the best and many of the failures we see due to elevated temperatures are completely avoidable. The technology that's use for ignition is antiquated and unreliable compared to the automotive industry, the highlight of the current technology is roller lifters, introduced into the automotive industry in the 70s and 80s. Knock sensing, efficient fuel injection, automated advance, unleaded fuels, near zero oil use, low particulate emissions the list goes on an on. The controls introduced for safety resulted in an industry bereft of innovation due to a high barrier of entry. Ask yourself when's the last time you heard of a car engine with carbon build up or burnt valve seats, or low compression or swallowing a valve. Or how about the relative merits of using silk thread to an adjunct for effective seals in a modern production vehicle.

Liquid cooling provides the control to operate engines at far closer tolerances and allows modern engines to meet emissions targets. Liquid cooling made sense for numerous for numerous WW2 airplanes because it allowed more effective aerodynamics. There was a significant debate at the time over which approach was best as both had their pros and cons. A better understanding of the merideth effect allowed fighter like the P51 to be extremely efficient using water cooling & the NACA cowling allowed large radials back into the game just prior to WW2. Water cooled engines were more efficient but air cooled engines were considered more robust. The bottom line is air cooling is simpler but water cooled engines properly installed can produce lower drag installations. But getting this right is difficult.

The chestnut is "Automotive engines aren't designed to run at full power" In reality, automotive engines are designed to run at full power for long periods. Look into the testing regimes of automotive engines you'll find that is one of the basic qualifying tests. People who say they're only designed to run at part loads as flat out wrong. I'm not saying that the complexity of auto engine installations are manageable by most home builders, obviously it isn't. However what I'm saying is that mechanically the engines are more than up to the job when integrated correctly. The reason that I put in the subaru driving record was to show that when the engines are installed by the manufacturer they are can operation at 100% power for 100,000km without failure. Many people simply aren't aware of or qualified to understand the compounding effects of the modifications that make to the engines and this is one area of risk. But simple failures independent of an engine mechanical failure, like a loss of fuel, spark, boost or PSRU make up most of the failures. The thread below shows https://vansairforce.net/threads/lycoming-or-alternative-which-is-more-reliable.28452/

Hopefully the investigation will provided information which hopefully can assist others in understand what went wrong so there can be some positive outcomes from this trajedy. The old chestnut that auto engines aren't designed for full power loadings simply isn't true. The testing associated with auto engines includes extended operations at full power. An example of how robust these engines are is in this example. https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a60787517/subaru-legacy-still-holds-this-incredible-speed-record-from-1989/ Auto engines in aeroplanes do have a much higher failure rate however the vast majority of issues associated with these failures relates to installation and PSRU issues, not fundamental issues with the engine. Modern car engines are built to higher tolerances using better engineering that any of the aero manufacturer engines. Modern car engines are far more reliable than Lycoming engines and their brethren. Start a modern car engine, they're better balanced, faster starting and use less oil, they're far better. However these engines are far harder to install in aircraft and maintain that reliability, they're invariably bespoke engineering, often with unanticipated failure modes and innocent looking decision can have fatal consequences. These installation issues makes them less safe, but pretending that it's an engine design issue isn't helping.

Can't a mine have an airstrip? There appear to be lots that do.

Out of curiosity does is anyone aware of the service fees charged by AVData? Is it possible to set up a low cost alternative? It's information capture + busywork which AI could handle.

I live in the deluded hope that one day someone might see the wisdom of a second airport in the Canberra region. If such as beast was created it with no or low landing fees it would quickly suck the life out of Goulburn. I found the information here a bit of a fascinating read. http://canberrasecondairport.com/

It's a sad story for all involved. It should have been a haven for aircraft and pilots pushed out from Canberra Airport, and should have been supported by the sale of leasehold blocks hangar blocks. Instead its became better known for petty tiffs.

So where we are is that Sensing mechanisms for knock detection are common and low cost Acoustic sensors are probably the simplest approach. No-one is aware of it being done on Lycoming engines. There are many mechanisms for controlling knock including mixture & throttle control but other mechanisms requires tweaking ;-). Of interest is the knock frequency calculator https://phormula.com/knock-frequency-calculator/ The frequency for the an 0360 would be about 4.4 kilohertz.

I wonder if this relates more to the condensate of carbonic acid ie CO2 in liquid water in a long exhaust where the gases cool significantly. This could possibly corrode steel exhausts. Are the exhausts of an airplane likely to get to the temperatures where an the steam would form a condensate and be able to form an acid? Probably only during startup. https://content.ampp.org/materials-performance/magazine-article/2613/Some-Aspects-of-Steam-Condensate-Corrosion

Your understanding of the term differs from mine. From the Oxford dictionary definition improve (a mechanism or system) by making fine adjustments to it. "engineers tweak the car's operating systems during the race" Based upon the above I think that adding telemetry doesn't change the system so it's not a tweak. Happy for you to continue to disagree but I'm not buying. 😉 You can take this to extremes and ask yourself if putting a car on a dyno is a tweak? It's temporary external instrumentation.

As I said, both events can ruin your day. Is AVGAS now a low sulfur fuel? I know that sulfur has been stripped from both diesel and automotive fuels.

Exhaust gas is already full of water, which also goes into the crankcase. Water injection doesn't greatly impact this issue and exits the engine as steam along with combustion steam. If you're using water injection during landing there's other issues at play. Yes water is heavy however water injection is only needed across a small fraction of the flight envelope, so the weight penalty is small in relation to the benefits. Cruise and decent don't as a rule require optimal RON fuel. Corrosion of the fuel system was effectively controlled by mixing a small amount of water soluble oil into the mix. I'm not familiar with severe corrosion being caused by water injection in the exhaust and I haven't seen or heard of this being an issue. I've never seen it in cars and it's not mentioned in the STC for water injection in planes. Water is an existing component of exhaust gases equal in quantity to CO2. Basic organic chem says there's about 2 hydrogen for every Carbon atom in hydrocarbons, water injection just puts a bit more steam into the mix. Wherever there's an air conditioner there's a ready supply of clean distilled water, so availability's not that much of an issue. Water from a rainwater tank also has very low levels of electrolytes and you can test it with a simple electrical device. Water will be far more available than lead in the future.

Knock detection is an out of band event sensor. There's no requirement to direct engine control, it's similar to an EGT sensor. I wouldn't characterise it as tweaking, I'd probably characterise it as instrumentation and telemetry.

For those of you who hold the quality control of AVgas in high regard the following article might temper your beliefs. I'm not sure if standards were changed or adopted as a result of this. Trust but verify is a pragmatic approach & knock sensors might be relevant. https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/2001/sir200103_001

Knock detection allows a safe way to operate closer to detonation limits especially with lower quality or variable fuels, and also could allow for the detection of a bad batch of fuel on the ground with an engine run up. As has been suggested, knock detection goes hand in hand with digital engine controls which on automotive vehicles add a cost of far less than $100 per engine. Digital systems can and do operate engines far more reliably and intelligently than people and the ongoing reliance on manual engine control is a blight on the industry. There is no reason for FADEC on a plane to cost significantly more than automotive systems or to be anything but standard, however we are where we are through well intentioned but poorly implemented policy controls. It's also worth pointing out the knock and preignition are different beasts. Knock is detonation of fuel air mixture where the chemical reaction is propogated by a shockwave rather than a flame front. Preignition is where something other than the spark is igniting the fuel air mixture, such as an overheated exhaust valve. Both can ruin your day, however it's important to understand the distinction. Knock sensors will detect detonation but not preignition (unless the preignition then also creates a detonation event) There are a number of controls that can be used to stop knock. Making the mixture richer Cooling the intake charge Retarding ignition Octane enhancers such as water or Water/methanol Reducing manifold pressure. Running rich of peak is safer for sacks of meat because humans can't effectively juggle the variables in real time in a consistently manner. In short, digital systems have operated engines for the last 40 years lean of peak through all phases of operation far more safely, reliably, efficiently and at higher power levels than people can. The question is, can we utilise some of the technologies developed in the Automotive space to make flying safer? Knock sensors are a baby step with limited gains however it is an important functional sensor for safe engine operation. For those concerned about the octane ratings of lean vs rich fuel mixes, water injection also can increase the RON by 25 which if implemented would provide significant safety margins for METO operations. It's not new technology, the Germans in WW2 used it effectively to compensate for their poor quality fuels. It's also available, far less toxic and cheaper than Tetra-ethyl Lead. It's also cheaper to retrofit than an engine rebuild. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6389520/

Yes however I'd expect direct injection as a retrofit to be at least an order of magnitude more difficult to develop and install on existing aircraft. Is backfiring a common damage mechanism on existing aviation powerplants?

You're absolutely on the money here. Virtually every petrol vehicle that's on the road today detects knock and retards the ignition, however as airplane engines don't have the strict emissions targets of their land based brethren, enriching the mixture or even water/methanol injection can assisting in controling knock. In the experimental world there are a number of providers selling electronic ignition and fuel injection solutions. But none of them appear to have knock sensing logic. Digital systems do a much better job than people in ensuring that engines operate using the best possible parameters be it maximising power, minimising fuel flow and keeping engine temperatures sane. Given the low cost commodity nature of these systems it seems insane that there isn't more development in this area. I can't see a long or even medium term future for leaded fuel, even without a national approach, it's simply too toxic to withstand a concerted effort from a concerned local community worrying that their children are being brain damaged by the folly of a few people who love to fly. Even though the real reason is that they simply don't like the noise. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3230438/ I suspect that part of the change will involve a significant push towards mogas as the standard fuel for the GA fleet as High octane lead free fuels will not be cheap. Many flying schools operate today on Mogas due to the economics. To mitigate the risk of fuels with less stringent quality controls electronics appear to be the simplest and safest solution.

Don't mention the war.