PROFILE : Over Easy : Aerobatics sends a Santa Paula pilot for a loop, but he insists the sport is safer than driving a car.

Lee Manelski, who will be competing in the upcoming world aerobatic championships, was trying to explain why a sport that calls for executing loops and flips and plunging to the earth at about 160 m.p.h. is actually safer than driving a car.

“When you’re driving at high speeds you don’t have room for correction like you do in flying,” the Santa Paula pilot said. “The emphasis on aerobatic flying is on grace and creativity, not speed and danger. If you call a move I do a stunt, then you would have to call a triple axel by Dorothy Hamill a stunt as well.”

But Manelski conceded that air shows are dangerous. “In shows, the pilots take risks because they want to please the crowd,” he said. “Give a pilot an audience and he’ll eventually kill himself.”

While insisting that flying is safe, he is reminded of an emergency landing two months ago. Manelski was practicing his aerobatic routine for the world competition, spinning and twirling about 3,000 feet up in the air, when his small plane developed engine trouble.

“I was somewhat surprised by the whole thing,” Manelski said calmly, adding that no similar emergencies had occurred in his nearly three decades of flying.

“I wasn’t frightened; I knew I’d get out of it OK. I just spotted a field, stuck with my decision, and landed. I got out without a scratch, but the left wing of my plane was wrecked. I hired four mechanics to work on it from six in the morning until 11 at night, six days a week, to repair it in time for the competition.

The red, white and blue Laser plane is now done and Manelski will fly it at the world aerobatic championships in Switzerland Aug. 3-10.

He and the other members of the five-men, five-women United States Aerobatic Team will compete against about 90 pilots from 22 countries. Since the first biannual contest in 1960, the United States, Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Hungary have been strong competitors.

Although this is Manelski’s first world competition, he has flown in many national contests. His hangar in Santa Paula is lined with more than 70 plaques and trophies.

Manelski started flying in 1962 when he was 17.

“I took a free demonstration ride and that was it, I was hooked,” he said. “At first I could only afford an hour lesson each week, and I spent all of my earnings on it. I loved flying so much.”

After a few years of working as a pilot, Manelski, a pilot for Trans World Airlines, became bored. He compared his job to that of a bus driver: taking passengers from point A to point B.

A friend took him up for a few aerobatic maneuvers in the early 1970s.

“I loved it, it was wonderful, it was like my first flight in ‘62,” he said. “The first year I flew more than 300 hours. The average is 50 to 75 hours per year. I soaked it in.” Almost two decades later, “the thrill is still there.”

Manelski said he entered his first competition in 1977 and won third place. “I didn’t think I’d still be competing in 1990, but here I am,” he said.

“I’ve given up a lot to do the circuit,” said Manelski, who has been divorced twice and considers his many hours of flying as a factor in the breakups. “But flying is almost like a fix--I have to have it.”

Each month, Manelski spends about 25 days flying--for the airlines, practicing his aerobatic routines or teaching aerobatics. For the past 12 years he has taken countless students up in his two-seater Pitts Special. An air sickness bag is taped up by the students’ seat--but it’s been used only three times.

“Not too many people get sick because I take it easy on their first time up,” he said. “Taking it easy” entails limiting the flight to about 10 minutes and doing only four or five loops and rolls and plunges.

“I also warn the students to eat a light breakfast beforehand,” he added. “You want to have something in your stomach, but no one full of greasy eggs should go around flying upside down.”

UP CLOSE LEE MANELSKI

Occupation: Member of the United States Aerobatic Team, airline pilot and aerobatic flying instructor.

Favorite movie: “Somewhere In Time.” Also likes “Top Gun.”

Plans: When he retires, Manelski hopes to write a book about aerobatic flying and to play a lot of golf.

Perspective: “Aerobatic flying is a lot like golf swing. It takes all of your concentration and every part of the execution has to be just right.”