....
Jay, if your only alternative to keep flying was to drop, say,
$40K into a diesel conversion for Atlas, would you?

Jay's only choice would be the 235hp SMA diesel for about $100,000 firewall
forward. And I don't think they've made any progress toward an STC for his
PA28 model, so Jay would have to "transfer" into an Experimental
Certificate. Seeing as Jay has expressed his opinion on the government
bureaucracy rather strongly, I'd suspect his head would explode going down
that road.
;-)