History on the Wing : Aviation: More than 10,000 spectators gather to watch a world-class collection of vintage planes fly above Santa Paula Airport.

Santa Paula Airport’s vintage aircraft roared into the wild blue yonder Sunday in an air show filled with flybys, aerobatics and the kind of nostalgia generated by planes that carved big niches in American aviation history.

More than 10,000 spectators over the weekend took advantage of warm, sunny weather to “Ooh” and “Ahh” as the proud pilots showed that their planes, dating back to a 1928 Travel Air 4000, have as much of the right stuff as jets of the modern aviation era.

“These are flying museum pieces you’re seeing here,” the show’s announcer, Greg Andrews, said as the colorful planes prepared to take off from the 62-year-old airport’s runway.

The show has been held about every five years, said Ray Young of Santa Paula, the event’s co-chairman. But now, he said, because of the show’s popularity, organizers are pushing to hold the show every three years.

“People like the older planes,” Young said. “And they like the intimacy of the airport.”

Over the years, Santa Paula Airport has attracted top-flight vintage planes and their pilots. All of the planes at the show--including a gleaming aluminum 1937 Spartan Executive and the Pipers, Cessnas and Beech aircraft of the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s that still soar from coast to coast--are based at the airport and maintained in its hangars.

The Santa Paula Airport is the only Ventura County airport without a control tower. It is home base to about 360 planes, of which about one-third are vintage aircraft built before 1960.

“This is all local talent,” Young said of those participating in the event, called Airshow ’92. The show also featured sky divers and balloon and airplane rides. Air show proceeds were donated to Santa Paula Memorial Hospital.

Many of the aviators who own hangars at the airport literally picked up stakes and relocated in the Santa Paula area so that they could belong to the privately owned Santa Paula Airport Assn. and restore and work on their planes there.

“I moved to Santa Paula to be closer to my hangar,” said Young, a real estate investor and former Woodland Hills resident.

One of the most popular aviators based at the airport is Mira Slovak, a native of Czechoslovakia who escaped to the West in 1950.

After arriving in the United States, Slovak rose from piloting a crop duster airplane to becoming the personal pilot for William E. Boeing Jr., the son of the founder of the big Seattle-based aerospace firm that bears his family’s name.

Recently, Slovak obtained title to 34 Czech jet trainers. He put one of them through its paces at Sunday’s air show.

“Slovak is an amazing man,” announcer Andrews, himself a pilot, declared over the show’s loudspeaker system as the jet roared by the reviewing platform.

The gleaming aluminum Spartan Executive was considered a show-stopper, Andrews said. “It was the Learjet of its era.” He estimated its current value at about $300,000.

“There’s a lot of history here at this airport,” said an appreciative spectator, Ray Smith of Simi Valley, a former U. S. Air Force engineer, while watching the planes go through their loops, snap rolls and hammerhead turns.

Two of the pilots who helped write that history are Bob (Wilbur) Van Ausdell, 70, and Perry (Orville) Schreffler, 70, both retired Trans World Airlines pilots who have made the airport their aviation home.

Both pilots, who are World War II aviator veterans, refer to themselves facetiously as “the Wrong Brothers.” They were hired by TWA on the same day and retired 33 years later, in 1981.

They said they were the first commercial airline pilots to discover the ambience of Santa Paula Airport and, in turn, attracted other commercial pilots to similar pursuits.

“We began attracting pilots to the airport 32 years ago,” Schreffler recalled. “No one knew about it. And then, it just got worldwide famous, that’s all.”

Their hangars, topped with TWA logos, stand side by side.

At the air show, Van Ausdell flew a 1944 Beech Staggerwing; Schreffler demonstrated a 1954 Piper Apache.

“This airport is out of the Twilight Zone,” said Van Ausdell.

“It’s a different kind of flying,” Van Ausdell said.