Archive
Newsletters
For many years, Vince Rabutsky took careful notes at each of our meetings and published a monthly newsletter that summarized the meeting, added a bit of flying information that you might not have known about, and previewed the next meeting. This page is an archive of his work and will contain a shorter summary of current meetings.
Update: 2021-04-29 I finally got around to removing phone numbers and email addresses from the newsletters. There a couple from 2008 and then starting in April of 2009 it looks like Vince never missed a meeting. Paul and his RV and David and his Humel are featured frequently. Vance makes frequent appearances as well. The page is password protected to keep out the bots. The password is KSBP.
Current Meetings
Follow-up from discussions at the meetings.
Lockheed Electra Junior
We were looking at a picture of a Lockheed Electra Junior that is posted on the wall in EAA meeting hangar and Russell wondered if it was still in Santa Maria and if Ruth Holden still owned it. It turns out that there is an interesting history behind it.
Chuck’s Planes
Chuck Borden has been building airplanes since the 80s. Here are a few of his projects.
June 2025
Sean talked about building a BD-5 in his apartment garage. testing it at the Hollister airport, and then crashing it on takeoff from San Martin.
May 2025
Because the second Sunday was Mother’s Day we moved the meeting to the third Sunday to coincide with the 99s meeting. It was a great day with a huge turnout and we got to see Emmie’s Cirrus and Bob’s RV on the ramp.
April 2025
Dave brought his Waco and talked about why he bought it, how much fun it is to fly, and some of the cross-country trips he took in it.
March 2025
Sean brought his Pitts and talked about building a prop powered BD-5 (and crashing it), flying his Christen Eagle with family and friends, and building and doing aerobatic flying in his Pitts. He’s currently working on a two-place Cub-like plane and when he finishes that, a Ryan may be next.
February 2025
The Royal Air Force was here for maneuvers and gave us a tour of their Airbus Atlas C1 and an overview of their training and operations.
January 2025
Mike Dacey talked about building and racing his Questair Venture “Bad Intentions” at the Reno Air Races.
December 2024
Paulo takled about how his students are making instruments and parts so that they can turn the Cirrus into an experimental airplane and install telemetry instruments inti it for use by the telemetry class.
November 2024
We broke our streak of Erich, Erik, Eric’s this month but Jerry was very interesting. This is our first attempt at doing a video and it turned out OK but we should pick a different background.
October 2024
Eric is teaching a class on airplane building at Cal Poly. He started last year and the students are continuing this year. The wings, tail, and fuselage structure are complete.
September 2024
Erik is working on his instrument rating and built a simulator that mimics his panel to get practice. Susan is going to start on her rating as soon as Erik finishes and their plane is out of the paint shop.
August 2024
Another good turnout for us to be jealous of the people who made it to AirVenture 2024.
July 2024
For such a nice day, we had a good turnout of around 20 people for Noelle’s talk about Social Pressures in the Cockpit.
June 2024
Erich brought his LongEz and talked about the history of canards.
May 2024
We had our meeting with the 99s and Paulo talked about his newest project, tracking the movement of acrobatic planes and then playing back the results so that pilots can improve their performance.
April 2024
Digital is Different: Observations on the transition from analog to advanced cockpits
March 2024
This month was be a continuation of our streak of having unusual airplanes at our meetings. Joe Gambucci and Dan Hutchinson are partners in another unusual airplane — a Wittman Tailwind. I don’t know anything about them so it was interesting to learn about their history and how Dan and Joe came to own this one.
February 2024
Russell Green brought his Esquale to the meeting and talked a bit about its history and his experience buying and flying it.
January 2024
Joe Deszo talked about buying his first airplane at 83 years old, an Ercoupe 415-C, and the progress he is making to get it into a flyable condition.
December 2023
Gene Gay talked about the 3 1/2 year process of upgrading the panel in his Glassair.
November 2023
Jim Gregory talked about Central Coast Aviators in World War II.
October 2023
We had planned on a Young Eagles Event but didn’t get enough pilots, probably because of the AirFest airshow in Santa Maria.
September 2023
Ben Chance brought his Eagle project to the meeting. It’s an old Piper that he fixed up and made child-safe for interactive display at a museum or Boy’s and Girl’s Club.
July 2023
A nice turnout for Mike Dalyrmple talking about flying to Alaska, Colorado, and the Bay Area.
May 2023
The speaker for May couldn’t make it but several students and new pilots stepped in for an interesting meeting.
April 2023
Aerodynamics for Pilots presented by the SLO 99s and Cal Poly Aerospace Engineering Students
March 2023
Farmington to Kingman: Delighting your passengers with a birds-eye view of Monument Valley, Lake Powell, and the Grand Canyon.
February 2023
Another good day for a meeting. JP thrilled us with his story about racing for the first time at Reno. He’s building a wing that should improve his times and placement dramatically this year.
January 2023
The weather broke long enough for the biggest turnout we’ve had in a while. And James didn’t disappoint us. You can read his slide show at the link.
December 2022
Great weather again for today’s meeting about the path to getting your multi-engine rating. Eric had lots of comments and imput from other multi rated pilots and Frank talked a bit about getting his multi and owning an Apache and Aerostar.
November 2022
Great weather for today’s meeting about the path to becoming an Airline pilot. Sam was great even though he was jetlagged after returning from Australia. Lots of good questions from the audience.
October 2022
This was a record length for a meeting at three hours of fascinating conversation with Vance Breeze, exceeding even the length of time when the airport fireman brought over one of their trucks. Vance started off his presentation by talking about his famous father, also named Vance Breeze a famous test pilot. Vance has graciously written up the contents of his talk for those who missed it so here it is.
September 2022
Paulo and Kurt showed off the control room for the telemetry project they’ve been working on for Cal Poly students taking his 400 level class. Kurt flew the school’s RV over Avila Bay and we got to watch parameters on the aircraft as he did stalls and steep turns. Eventually the SR22 that just arrived will be controlled remotely from the control room.
August 2022
We had a great turnout for our second meeting of the year, with around two dozen members. Four local pilots who went to AirVenture talked about their experiences. And Tom was back with real hot dogs.
July 2022
A good turnout for the July meeting. It was nice to have a meeting without wind for a change. James brought his Affordaplane fuselage and talked about the build process. Wings are next and should take 250 hours to build.
June 2022
Morgan Hall brought his Bellanca Citabria restoration project to the meeting. It looks like a brand new airplane. He and Julie have flown it about 25 hours so far and it performs flawlessly.
May 2022
Rob Swanland brought his Viking to the meeting (one of his five Bellancas) and talked about the performance of the plane and his recent purchase of the Bellanca company.
April 2022
The April meeting fell on a holiday so we combined our meeting with the Mustang Flying Club meeting and flew a bunch of Cal Poly kids. Dan and Carl brought their planes to show off.
March 2022
Todd came down from Washington with his CubCrafters NXCub. This airplane was built in the factory by the original owner in the owner-assisted quick build process. Todd bought it by accident when his plane was in for maintenance and he struck up a conversation with the owner.
February 2022
The Omicron variant is slowing down but infections and deaths are still high so there won’t be a meetings this month. There’s not a whole lot of chapter news this month but I found a couple of things you might be interested in.
January 2022
The Omicron variant is rampant so there won’t be any meetings for a while. There’s not a whole lot of chapter news this month but I found a couple of things you might be interested in including a Stratolaunch Roc test flight, SOFIA news, and some odd things.
November 2021
Carl brought his Maule to Sunday’s meeting and regaled us with tales of short takeoffs and landings. It’s a four-place plane but he usually flies it with two people. There’s room in the back for his mountain bikes and a trip to Sedona can be done without stopping for fuel.
October 2021
Morgan shared the story of his restoration of an Aeronca. The amount of work required is incredible, especially if you have Morgan’s fanatical attention to detail. Prepping and painting the fabric wings was hundreds of hours of labor.
September 2021
Once again, COVID infections and deaths are too high to have a meeting. I’ve put together some interesting aviation tidbits to tide you over.
July 2021
Jacob talked about his experiences buying a Lancair and how it took a year and a half to get it here—still not working right.
June 2021
Paulo shared his tricks for getting the most out of his pilot and plane while conforming to strict racing rules.
May 2021
We had a huge turnout for our first post-COVID meeting. I counted about three dozen people including a dozen new members. Thanks again Tom for making the hot dogs.
April 2021
Not alot of news this month. There will be some airport closures, including during the day this summer and fall so be sure to check the NOTAMs.
March 2021
We don’t get much in the way of weather here and I suspect most of you have the same three categories of weather that I do; Wow it’s nice, I should go flying; I wonder when the fog will burn off so I can fly; and Oh hell no, I’m not going out in that. I put together some links that you might not know about to help you get into the air.
February 2021
Once again not a whole lot happening with our members this month, but I found some interesting stuff: a local company made parts for the latest Mars rover, there’s video of another Victor Glover spacewalk, and the FAA has issued guidance that requires pilots to wait 48 hours after receiving a vaccine before acting as PIC.
January 2021
Not a whole lot happening with our members this month, but I found some interesting stuff: the Library of Congress has digitized old sectionals, NASA’s SOFIA observatory is still taking amazing photos, and Victor Glover made his first spacewalk.
November 2020
Lots of local pilots in the news this month. Oscar Bayer passed away, Harry Moyer made a celebratory flight on his 100th birthday, and Cal Poly alumnus Victor Glover piloted the Crew Dragon spacecraft to the ISS.
October 2020
I hadn’t planned to send an newsletter this month, but then this discovery was announced this week. Since Liz Ruth spent some time talking to us about SOFIA I thought you might want to know about one of its new discoveries.
“It was, in fact, the first time SOFIA has looked at the Moon, and we weren’t even completely sure if we would get reliable data, but questions about the Moon’s water compelled us to try,” said Naseem Rangwala, SOFIA’s project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. “It’s incredible that this discovery came out of what was essentially a test, and now that we know we can do this, we’re planning more flights to do more observations.”
September 2020
A new member of our chapter, Nick Hellewell had recently gotten his pilots license and purchased a Piper Pacer. He was in poor weather conditions in the Shenandoah Mountains when he crashed.
This month we’re featuring videos from the History Guy and exhorting you to get your vaccinations.
August 2020
Since we can’t have meetings, I put together some interesting videos on YouTube for your enjoyment and edification. Mike Patey has more energy than 10 of me and he’s building his 14th airplane now. After watching Trent Palmer and his friends, a taildragger will be on your bucket list. Lew Dix and Jon Kotwicki have an interesting approach to flight training. I’m not much for podcasts and I missed most of the info on the Hudson River ditching 10 years ago, but I recently found a podcast with Chuck Rosenberg and Sully Sullenberger that was interesting.
June 2020
The recent accident in Santa Maria is a reminder that even though student pilots are by far the safest group of pilots, they sometimes have accidents too. When I was learning to fly there were two fatal accidents on takeoff from KSBP; I witnessed a ground loop; and I taxied past an airplane that had almost had it’s wing cut off a few hours before by another airplane. Surprisingly enough I finished my PPL. Since we aren’t having a meeting this month, I thought it might be useful to review the accidents at KSBP over the last few years. A few of our members make an appearance, fortunately they are still with us.
May 2020
No meeting again this month, but I did have a chance to scan in some articles from the early 80s that I think Frederick Cook saved. Garrit Vanderziel shows us how to land gear-up, and makes several appearances with his biplane. Darrell Radford makes an appearance with his Christen Eagle. Chuck Borden shows off his garage-built Thorpe T-18. I don’t recognize the Orgel (Danny?) Dever, Pete Wurtz, Bob Benefiel, Kent Blankenburg, Dick Shapely, Rod Levin, John Dagle, Victor Voyce, Glen Peck, and Harry Eckelberger.
February 2020
We had a great turnout and lots of questions for the Morgan. He has some links to share with us if you are interested in learning to fly gliders.
January 2020
We had lots of questions for the fireman who drives the fire and rescue truck. When everyone had all of their questions answered, we spent some time talking about ADS-B. A newcomer, Ted, won the raffle for a trip back to KSMX in Vance’s rotocraft.
December 2019
Barry Branin regaled us with tales of flying his 1931 Waco .
November 2019
Dan and Joe presented their experiences installing an EDM 900 in Dan’s Piper Arrow.
October 2019
Dan Hutchinson talked about the history of his 1947 Republic RC-3 and a lot about how he got into seaplane flying.
September 2019
We had five planes and pilots to give some stick time to six “Old Eagles” on our Fly-In to Santa Ynez.
August 2019
Liz Dinan, Tom Del Rey, Robert Swanland, and Barry Branin were our panelists for a discussion of AirVenture 2019. TLDR; You should go!
June 2019
Everything Airplane Pilots Don’t Want to Know About Helicopters
As most of you know Joe Deszo was part of the team that developed the Robinson R22. He talked about the development and some pitfalls that catch unwary helicopter pilots at our June meeting.
May 2019
Another great presentation by Paolo Iscold—even though it was hard to hear over the downpour. This time he talked about the failure of the wings on Nixus and the process of rebuilding them with the help of Cal Poly students. The sailplane took advantage of the long runway at Castle Airport in Merced and made its first flight in March.
April 2019
The fog never cleared so we didn’t get to fly.
March 2019
Colonel James Schaefer talked about Operation Eagle Claw, the training in the desert southwest, the bureaucratic hoops they had to jump through, the sandstorm on the way, and the crash that led to the cancellation of the mission.
February 2019
About 20 people braved the rain for Liz’s talk about NASA’s SOFIA 747-based telescope.
January 2019
A very informative talk about issues facing older pilots, hypoxia, and flying to Mexico.
December 2018
Don talked about ADSB. Click to get caught up before the meeting so you know the terms.
November 2018
Jim Ratichek talked about his months-long upgrade of the panel in his Lancair. He made a new panel to fit the PFDs, ran hundreds of wires to monitor and control everything, and made hundreds of splices to connect them. After months of the planning and many more months to install, Jim is in the final stages of testing.
October 2018
Paolo Iscold shared his experiences starting as an undergrad in Brazil to currently teaching at Cal Poly. Read More
Previous
Vince’s Newsletters
Vince put out a newsletter just about every month since May of 2009. I’ll be removing phone numbers and email addresses from them and publishing them here as time permits. Here are a couple to get you started.
September 2018Tom Del Re talked about his time with Northwest Airlines and Oscar Bayer talked about his 31 years of service in the US Air Force, working as a CFI, and building a Starduster.
August 2018Tim Williams talked about buying and learning to fly his T-6 Texan, then flying it to Oshkosh.
July 2018We visited Bob DeVries’ hangar to see his meticulously restored Ryan STM-2.
June 2018Jim Gregory, a longtime Arroyo Grande resident and author of four books about Central Coast people and events, talked about Central Coast Aviators in World War II.
May 2018Vance Breese talked to us about things with wings that go round in circles but aren’t helicopters.
April 2018Paul Kendrick organized a wildly successful Young Eagles event in lieu of an April Meeting.
March 2018We had an informtive talk by Matt Mihalco, Fire Captain and Air Attack Officer, who is based at the Paso Robles Airport. The CAL FIRE Aviation Management Program is a branch of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
February 2018We met up with CHP officers Robert Shannon and Shannon Slover and their aircraft, respectively Cessna T206 and helicopter Airbus (AirStar) H125.
January 2018We didn’t have any speakers for this month so we talked about our “Annual Experiences”.
2009
The program was a presentation by a Cal Poly Senior Project Team. They call themselves, the Aircraft Performance Data Collection Team.
June 2009
Dean Billing, Ernie Billing’s Dad talked about “The Fuel Crisis in Sport Aviation”.
July 2009
This month’s program was devoted to SBP Airport Day planning.
September 2009
Cliff Clark told us of his 20-ish solo flying trips to Alaska and a couple of flights on to Siberia.
October 2009
Gary Corippo, a director and one of the founders of the Estralla Warbirds Museum at the Paso Robles airport, spoke to us about the early start of the museum and especially about Glenn Thomson, also a founder of the museum.
November 2009
Mark took us to his brightly lit, clean, neat and orderly hanger to view his S-51 project. One distraction that was hard to ignore was the beautifully maintained 1964 Cessna 185 that sat proud as a peacock and occupying a good share of the hanger space. Nevertheless, for the moment the disassembled parts of Mark’s S-51 project captured our attention.
December 2009
Liz Dinan received the Wright Bros. Master Pilot Award and Peter Garrison talked about building the Melmoth at the Annual Dinner.
Our mailing address is: