kgwilson

Several companies are now producing solar powered EV charging stations. The NRMA set up the first one in the Northern Territory in 2023 & it was a failure with poor performing equipment plagued with problems. It has now been completely rebuilt & works fine now. It is quite small with only 26kW of solar panels on the roof & a 200 kWh battery. It has 2 x 80 kWh chargers & costs 99 cents/kWh. Sero Global from WA produces one of a similar size. These can be delivered on the back of a truck anywhere so compared to providing diesel or petrol the cost in very small & they don't need to be refuelled like a petrol/diesel station at high cost in the outback . Once set up they just need occasional maintenance. Larger ones are planned. They are still delivered on the back of a truck but a small solar farm produces the power. How much depends on the size of the battery storage, number and delivery speed of the chargers.

All this discussion on storage of fuel etc has been covered before on this site. Avgas has a completely different composition to automotive petrol. Avgas is Paraffin based whereas automotive petrol is aromatic hydrocarbon based. Paraffin is what is in wax candles and has quite a low odour. Automotive petrol has a very high odour & the smell is largely due to the evaporation of the light hydrocarbons in it. It is this evaporation that limits its shelf life. Avgas without the lead would detonate quickly especially as compression increases or when more fuel is fed into the cylinder at low rpm with the engine under load. The BP study on fuel stored on vehicle tanks is attachedpetrol-life-vehicle-tanks.pdfpetrol-life-vehicle-tanks.pdfpetrol-life-vehicle-tanks.pdf

Anyone in the outback with any common sense would install a solar array and battery for charging vehicles or other devices. High up front cost but then no dependence on fossil fuels, diesel generators or cost of delivery. The sun is still free.

OK I'll be the pedant here. Petrol comes from petroleum, a.k.a crude oil, which comes from the Greek words petra (rock) and oleum (oil). Gasoline though, has no obvious Greek or Latin roots. Not only that, but the gas part of the word is quite confusing, as gasoline is of course a liquid. And it doesn’t help that it’s generally shortened to gas in American English. So Avgas is an American term that has become standard in the Aviation world. Mogas though does not have that standardisation.. Americans don't call it Mogas, it is just Gas or gasoline. There is no rhyme nor reason for why but Americans change things at will and they become common ( except the Gulf of Mexico is not the Gulf of America. Any change made by Trump is just invalid)

BP produced a major study on this some years ago. 98 is generally good for up to 5 weeks in a fuel tank or if in a sealed container with little air gap about 4 months. I had some in my tank for about 7 months after the aerodrome was too wet to get out & I just added 5 litres of fresh 98 & it was fine. That is enough to refresh about 40 litres of old fuel. 98 has a number of light aromatic hydrocarbons ( Xylene, Toluene, Bezine Trymethyl benzine & others) that evaporate off first & this happens quite quickly (within 5 weeks). Interestingly the RON increases a little over that time but then often the engine is hard to start and once running it is prone to overheating which can lead to disastrous results. This happened in a chainsaw that we had in the SES. It had sat for at least 6 months & someone who was not aware didn't empty & replace the fuel with fresh as required. It was hard to start & ran till it was empty but refused to start again & there was no compression. The result was it had a hole in the piston, the big end bearing was stuffed & the bore was scored. We got a few spare parts from it though.

If your SE2 has been unused for some time it does take a little while to get a 3D GPS fix. If used regularly it takes very little time. Even if you haven't used it for months it will have easily got a 3D fix by the time you have got the engine started, warmed up & taxiied out to your run-up spot. In 2024 I coulnt get my aircraft out of the hangar for 6 months as the aerodrome was a quagmire plus I had been ill. It only took 6 or 7 minutes to get a fix when i finally got it out again.

The demand for Avgas has declined considerably over the past few years. There are a number of reasons. There are fewer old aircraft that need Avgas and many of those still flying do not fly as much. The rise of recreational aircraft that do not need Avgas has been very substantial since the 90s. Modern aviation aircraft engines don't need it either. Diesel engines are appearing in ever increasing numbers. The only reason I ever use Avgas is that it is the only fuel available at many aerodromes when I am away. I have used 95 or 98 petrol in my 3300A engine since new. No more lead deposits or fouled plugs. World Fuel & IOR have been busy installing self contained Avgas units at many regional aerodromes over the last few years often at no cost to the aerodrome. They need to boost their share of a dwindling market.

There is nothing like that in Australia but the Chinese have made huge inroads into electric trucks. Electric including hybrid outsold diesel for the first time in 2025 (54%). Windrose Technologies have an electric truck weighing 49 tonnes fully loaded with a huge 729 kWh battery & 670 KM range. The batteries are designed to be swapped out like the Janus and multiple other smaller trucks.

You can keep your head in the sand and pine for the good old days of smelly oil burners or embrace where technology is going. Plenty of businesses are doing just that. Some will fail but that is how progress happens as we learn from those mistakes. The fossil fuel industry is behind a huge amount of misinformation like EV production using too much rare and costly materials, batteries lasting only a few years etc and you throw away materials when everything is worn out. All garbage and absolute proof exists. One example is that batteries when completely spent are ground in to black mass & 95-98% of the cobalt, lithium, manganese and other rare material is recycled.

It is no longer 2023 but 2026. The Gen4 Formula E is all wheel drive, 10 seconds faster in some scenarios, produces 600kW (805HP) with 0 to 100 km/h in 1.5 seconds so is easily quicker to the first corner. F1 currently has the edge in top speed and handling but this will be overcome in the very near future. There is way more money poured in to every facet of F1 than FE

There are B doubles that fully loaded travel from Melbourne to Sydney on a single charge. The battery is swapped in less than 15 minutes. There are automatic battery swap machines for medium size trucks already operating that take less than 5 minutes. Quicker than filling the tank with diesel.

Who do you pay your tax to? Not yourself, You pay it to the government. How they choose to spend it depends on their priorities not yours individually. There is far more development globally in to electric propulsion for aviation than there is in either Jet or ICE powered aircraft. Already electric Vtol taxis operate in China. I prefer to look at the future and not live in the past. My aircraft is ICE powered as electric technology is still evolving and I will probably be dead before it becomes main stream in aviation. Internal combustion was invented in the 19th century. If internal combustion was developed now rather than 150 years ago it would be laughed of the planet. The future is electric and that is well established. Look around you. All your tools are battery powered, E-bikes are everywhere. EVs make up 10% of new vehicles in Australia far less that most other developed countries except the US where the Trump factor has put a large dent in progress there. Formula E motor racing cars leave F1 vehicles in their wake. The government can't tax the sun. My EV costs me nothing to run and I pay nothing to power my house & get a credit for the excess. Sure I have had to make a capital investment but I calculated the benefits and they are paying off handsomely. Those who have chosen to change have ignored the massive anti EV and electric change by the fossil fuel industry. They know the writing is on the wall and are doing everything they can to delay it including lobbying governments. Twiggy Forrest is no fool and has invested $4 Billion with Leibherr for more than 360 fully electric dump trucks powered from their own solar farms. BHP & others are doing similar things. They are not stupid and know they need to be in the transition now and not when things turn to custard as they could even now with what the tangerine todler is doing.

As it does in numerous other economies. Reducing that dependence is something we have been pretty slow at doing. That is certainly changing with Electric trucks on the road & in the mines. Crises like this should be a wake up call to us all. There is plenty of fossil fuel at the moment but reserves that are easy to extract are being used up and eventually extraction will become very expensive not to mention its detrimental effect on the climate. Removing the excise tax will cost the Government way too much so a reduction is a more likely possibility. If it was reduced by half then that is just 26 cents a litre cheaper. Better than nothing but not much.

The World Fuel avgas tank at South Grafton ran dry last week and is still empty. No word on when it is being replenished. Price at the time was $2.61 a litre. While we all whinge about the price hikes and especially because they happen on existing stock plus numerous tankers full already on their way here, the largest problem has been increased demand. Why? There has been no change in the weather or distance travelled or more vehicles on the road suddenly, it is pure and simple panic buying and greed. People especially in regional areas filling multiple 200 litre drums on a trailer or ute or even large tanks. Motorists filling their tanks to full when they normally wouldn't and filling jerry cans that normally sat at home part empty. Bunnings ran out of jerry cans & probably other retailers like Super Cheap etc. Just like toilet paper during Covid. Why? All this has contributed to the petrol and diesel retailers hiking the price. It is the normal economic model of supply and demand. I am sitting here with my Electric car charged for free from my solar panels and home battery so I may appear a bit smug but my wifes car runs on petrol and she didn't tear off to the petrol station to fill up. That will happen when the gauge gets to less than a quarter as normal. Also Australia has cheaper fuel than all European countries, the UK, NZ & most developed countries except the USA which is now about $US1.15 ($AUD 1.67) a litre. Our fuel excise tax is also lower than most developed countries. https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/USA/gasoline_prices/

Depending on the model the empty weight of a Spitfire is between 2.2 & 3 tonnes & with a high wing loading and span of 36 feet 10 inches (11.23 metres) it would take a pretty strong wind to flip it over.