I got a letter today from the FAA enclosing my Third Class medical certificate. This, you will recall, is the one I applied for last September, which was denied because I disclosed that I was taking an anti-anxiety medication (Cymbalta) at the time.
Since April of this year I have been working with Dr. Stephan Kramer of Frisco TX to get my medical certificate restored. This has probably cost me around $1000 in doctors fees so far, including $500 for a battery of cognitive tests that gave me a totally clean bill of health.
Still, the FAA does not seem to be that convinced of my mental state...they have only given me a certificate until 20th June 2009. They also want me to provide another set of medical reports to them "on or about April 1st 2009". I will need to discuss with Dr. Kramer exactly what that set of reports needs to contain. I hope that it is not another $1000 worth of reports, but I fear that it may be. Since I am not consulting with a psychiatrist any more, and I am not taking any medications, this report may be rather small, but I will be guided by Dr. Kramer as to what is required.
In addition, the letter contains this statement:

Because of your history of anxiety, depression and ADD, operation of aircraft is prohibited at any time new symptoms or adverse changes occur, or if you experience side-effects or require a change in medication.

This is an odd statement to make, since I have not been on medication since October 27th last year (and I am much the better for it; Cymbalta certainly eliminated my anxiety symptoms, but it also negatively impacted my creative thought processes). Reading this text makes me wonder just how much the FAA examiner actually read of my medical reports.
So, to sum up: I have my medical back, which is good news. However, the FAA certainly seems to be wanting to convert this into some sort of ongoing "prove your sanity" saga, which is not good.
I am now beginning to understand why many pilots have at best a jaundiced view of any involvement with the FAA...

Link: http://jalopnik.com/395981/swiftfuel-is-just-like-fuel-except-probably-full-of-crap

A start-up corporation named SwiftFuel claims to have the formula for a new non-petroleum fuel to (presumably) replace 100LL. This is a critique of their announcements on their MySpace page and their web site.
Unsurprisingly, many of the reactions are a tad skeptical...

If you have any sense of smell, and you fuel both a road car and an airplane which uses 100LL, you soon notice that compared to 100LL, road car fuel stinks to high heaven. Quite simply, it smells "nasty" when compared to 100LL.
The reason for this is that, compared to road car fuel, 100LL is more tightly regulated. There is a single standard (ASTM D910 in the USA) to which Avgas has to conform. This standard has been in place for a long time, and there are no local exceptions to the standard. All 100LL brewed in the USA has to conform to this standard. As a result, refineries do not adjust the composition of 100LL when they brew it the way that they adjust the composition of road car gasolines. For example, ASTM D910 does not allow the addition of ethanol. It has no "summer fuel" rules, and no state-specific rules either.
Avgas is comprised largely of alkylate, which is a high-octane feedstock produced in an alkylation unit in a refinery. Here is some of a Wikipedia entry about alkylate:

The product is called alkylate and is composed of a mixture of high-octane, branched-chain paraffinic hydrocarbons (mostly isopentane and isooctane). Alkylate is a premium gasoline blending stock because it has exceptional antiknock properties and is clean burning. Alkylate is also a key component of avgas. The octane number of the alkylate depends mainly upon the kind of olefins used and upon operating conditions. For example, isooctane results from combining butylene with isobutane and has an octane rating of 100 by definition. There are other products in the alkylate, so the octane rating will vary accordingly.

Raw alkylate can have a RON (Research Octane Number) of up to 100, but more commonly it has a RON of between 90 and 94. Often the refinery will add some reformate stock to adjust or optimize the octane rating. Finally, a minimum amount of tetraethyl lead is added to bring the octane rating up to the level required in the standard. The standard specifies a maximum lead content, but most 100LL contains a lot less lead than the allowed maximum.
The final result is not only a high-octane fuel, and, because it is usually blended from only two feedstocks, a chemically very pure fuel compared to the road car gasoline that flows out of the pump at your local filling station. That fuel is a blended base stock from a refinery (possibly containing dozens of different feedstocks). To that can be added ethanol, and the garage operator's own proprietary additive package. The result is a reasonably high-octane but also complex (and usually foul-smelling) brew.
The bad news is that alkylate and reformate are both premium gasoline feedstock. Nothing else comes close to them for sustained high octane ratings; therefore the cost of alkylate and reformate feedstocks is high, especially in the summer months, when more of it is used in road car gasoline brewing to meet summer gasoline standards. There is never enough alkylate and reformate to go around in the refining system.
100LL is only produced in batches to meet anticipated demand, it is not produced continously unlike road car gasoline. It also requires purging/cleaning of the refinery hardware used for brewing after use, because of the lead contamination. This, plus the cost of its dedicated distribution network comprised entirely of trucks and storage tanks (no pipelines) gives the three reasons why 100LL will always be more expensive than road car gasoline:

1. Use of premium feedstocks (alkylate and reformate)
2. Special refining procedures based on occasional on-demand production
3. Dedicated distribution infrastructure

While surfing the AOPA Forums, I came across a discussion which includes inputs by folks working in and around the petroleum industry.
One of the reasons why petroleum companies are adding 10% of ethanol to gasoline, making a fuel known in the industry as E10, is that they get a tax credit for adding ethanol. This reduces their cost to blend the fuel, providing them with a powerful fiscal incentive to brew E10 even if there is no legal requirement for them to do so.
However, a more pernicious impact of blending ethanol with gasoline is outlined in a post on the AOPA forums:

Ethanol has a Motor Octane Number (MON) of about 112, much higher than auto gasoline. At the 10% level of blending it boosts the AKI of the resultant blend by about 3, so if the terminal is using 87 AKI stock and adding 10% ethanol to make E10 which is the most common ethanol blend, it is about 90 AKI. Same goes for premium unleaded.
The wrinkle comes when a whole state goes E10. Then the terminals order "sub-octane" blending stock for regular which is about 84 MON, they blend the ethanol and it goes out as 87 AKI.

If this shift to sub-octane blending stock occurs at the refinery level,the refineries will stop sending out gasoline base stock at 87 AKI, and instead send it out at 84 AKI. For premium, they will stop sending out 92-93 octane AKI base stock, and instead sent out stock at 88 AKI. There is a powerful fiscal incentive for them to do this; lower-octane base stock for gasoline is significantly easier (read: cheaper) to brew.
BTW, it is important to note that ethanol is not currently blended with gasoline at the refinery because the increased water absorptions of the gasoline caused by the ethanol makes it dangerous to send it down pipelines...sort of a larger-scale version of the same issue that may affect your plane if you fill it with E10 and go fly...
You can see what is going to happen...if an airport wants to buy Mogas i.e. 91 octane unleaded gasoline, it will not be able to find any...the refineries will all be cranking out 88 octane gasoline for ethanol addition. So, aircraft owners potentially face a "double whammy"; not only is 100LL going to become much more expensive (and it may disappear if demand shrinks enough, as it already has disappeared in parts of Europe), but Mogas could also disappear, at least at 91 octane levels, because no gasoline stock will be available from the fuel suppliers except as a custom order (which would probably price it above current 100LLL wholesale pricing).
My plane's powerplant is a 160 bhp Lycoming O-320, which could be operated on 91 octane unleaded gasoline (according to the conditions of the most common autogas STC from Petersen Aviation). However that option may become moot if there is no 91 or higher octane motor gasoline available without ethanol...
UPDATE - Here is a paper written by the EAA concerning the 2007 legislation that initially mandated the addition of Ethanol to gasoline in Oregon. It does a good job of explaining aspects of the gasoline distribution networks in Oregon, and also shows that in 2007 the refineries were already sending sub-octane base stock down pipelines to distribution terminals.

In September 2007 I was denied a renewal of my Third Class medical certificate by the FAA because I was taking Cymbalta at the time. This is on the FAA list of psychotropic medications. I was aware that anti-depressants were incompatible with piloting according to the FAA, but did not know at the time that anti-anxiety drugs also fell into the same category.
I worked with my doctor to taper off and stop taking Cymbalta in the Fall of 2007 (not just for flying reasons - my use of it was negatively affecting my creativity and drive, which was affecting my work performance). I then got my doctor to send documentation to the FAA in April to request them to allow me to be issued a Medical certificate once more. By return mail I recieved a brusque form-letter dismissal of my application.
Reasoning that, since my doctor is not an AME, he may not have communicated information correctly to the FAA, I am now working with Dr. Stephan Kramer in Frisco TX, who in addition to being an AME who is also a pilot, works regularly with commercial pilots to get their medical certificates restored.
Basically, once you have gone on the FAA radar scope by virtue of a medical certificate denial for mental issues, you have to go through a fairly elaborate exercise to convince the FAA that you have (in Dr. Kramer's words) been "treated to remission". This process involves gathering medical records of all related treatment (in my case, since the cause of my anxiety was my divorce, this involves therapy records in addition to medical treatment records) and having a Psychologist execute a collection of cognitive tests on me. I completed the cognitive tests last week, with excellent results, and we are now assembling the paperwork for the FAA.
This process is likely to take another 2 months, after which time, if all goes well, I will be able to take to the air again. Until then, I will continue to work on the plane, conduct the 2008 ACI earlier in the year, and make sure I am ready to fly again. The only question then becomes one of whether I can afford to do any more than buzz around the patch...