The oil filter shortage has been a topic of discussion here, numerous other forums, and at fly-ins for most of this year. Basically, Champion’s production came to a halt, and while Tempest has been trying to take up the slack, they can’t more than double production in a short period of time, so yup - there are a whole lot fewer filters in the pipeline. And just like the great Toilet Paper issue a couple of years ago, folks decided they needed to stock up in advance of a shortage - making the shortage worse for everyone. To be fair, this hits businesses flying certified airplanes (FBO’s and Flight Schools) worse than it hits us the in the Experimental world, since they are grounded without the appropriate (certified) filter while we have some alternatives - so some of the “stock up” was businesses trying to survive. There are training Cessnas and Pipers sitting grounded for lack of a filter to complete a 100 hour inspection.
There are numerous threads here on VAF from the past couple of months on alternatives - try searching “Filter” for some of them.