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
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 2018
Tom 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 2018
Tim Williams talked about buying and learning to fly his T-6 Texan, then flying it to Oshkosh.
July 2018
We visited Bob DeVries’ hangar to see his meticulously restored Ryan STM-2.
June 2018
Jim 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 2018
Vance Breese talked to us about things with wings that go round in circles but aren’t helicopters.
April 2018
Paul Kendrick organized a wildly successful Young Eagles event in lieu of an April Meeting.
March 2018
We 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 2018
We met up with CHP officers Robert Shannon and Shannon Slover and their aircraft, respectively Cessna T206 and helicopter Airbus (AirStar) H125.
January 2018
We didn’t have any speakers for this month so we talked about our “Annual Experiences”.
2009
May 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 receivedd the Wright Bros. Master Pilot Award and Peter Garrison talked about building the Melmoth at the Annual Dinner.
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