Rats,
Tell me about it, we paid $660 for 200L drum recently.
100LL as we know it is not going to get any better, so don't expect that product to be here for long after UL avgas comes along.
There have been a few try over the years, the oil companies readily admit they have failed, but a really smart, quiet chap from a small town in Oklahoma has solved it. All the flight testing is done, the FAArequirements are satisfied, and at present the reports and paperwork are being done. This is like a single man type certifying a new airliner in workload terms. The guy is a genius, and clearly nuts
The stuff is good, I have had the honor of dipping my finger in the jar, so to speak, I know what it is made of (no don't ask
) and the good thing is it is easy to produce can be made in any decent refinery, and has no compatibility issues with other fuels. That means it can go into car fuel in any amount, so a messed up batch is not HAZMAT waste, it just makes awesome mogas.
Better still you can have 9999L of avgas, tip in one litre of G100UL and you now have non-conforming hazmat Avgas, but what you also have is conforming G100UL. It still meets spec. So. In any blend in your tank or the bowser tank it matters not.
Better vapor pressure and much higher octane, better than the old purple stuff, so anyone with high performance blown engines who have to run low blower on avgas will think all their Christmas wishes have come at once.
So it may not be massively cheaper, but the ability to produce it and sell it to other markets not just aviation and other factors means it should be cheaper, if not certainly more readily available.
This will not be next week, but it is not far away I hope. I will be over there in March and I hope by then George will have some more stuff to share. He deserves a knighthood for his work on this.