Santa Paula Pilot Killed in Crash : Aviation: Robert Van Ausdell, who some called ‘Captain Smile,’ died while attempting to land a 1920s-vintage plane on an Ohio runway.

Some called him “Captain Smile,” and fellow pilots on Wednesday said they missed their friend Robert C. Van Ausdell of Santa Paula, who died in a plane wreck in Ohio.

A retired TWA pilot and avid antique-airplane collector, Van Ausdell, 74, crashed Tuesday morning while attempting to land a 1920s-vintage plane, authorities said.

The day before the crash, Van Ausdell had completed a successful test flight of the single-engine, single-seat Travel Air Mystery Ship Model R at the Youngstown Elser-Metro Airport in North Lima, Ohio. The accident occurred at 10:20 a.m. Tuesday when he took the plane for another spin, said Mahoning County, Ohio, sheriff’s deputies.

Witnesses told deputies that Van Ausdell had aborted one landing and then crashed on a second attempt. Van Ausdell, who had flown his own restored 1944 Beechcraft Staggerwing to Ohio from Santa Paula on Monday, died at the scene.

News of Van Ausdell’s death shook the tight-knit community at the Santa Paula Airport, where he had stored aircraft for 35 years.

Van Ausdell, “Van” to his friends, first discovered the airport on a weekend flight with close friend Perry Schreffler in 1960. Since then the two were a fixture at the airport, where they had adjoining hangars.

Schreffler, also a retired TWA pilot, said his former co-workers at TWA referred to him and Van Ausdell as the “Wrong Brothers,” and he liked to call Van Ausdell “Wilbur.”

“I’ve known Wilbur for 47 years, since the day we were hired in at TWA in 1948,” Schreffler said.

The longtime buddies were inseparable and more like brothers than just friends, Schreffler said, adding that he was trying to look at the good side of the accident--that at least his friend died doing what he loved.

“That’s what you got to do, look at the good side, look at all the fun we had together,” he said. “I feel pretty lucky that I had such a good friend for the last 47 years.”

Mira Slovak, who has known Schreffler and Van Ausdell since they first came to the airport, said a lot of pilots looked up to Van Ausdell and his ability to fly any type of plane.

“They say . . . ‘He was a pilot’s pilot’ about people all the time, but Van was the real thing. He was a pilot’s pilot,” Slovak said.

Van Ausdell flew every year to Ohio for fun, Slovak said. Van Ausdell’s reputation as a pilot was in part the reason that he was asked to fly the newly restored Travel Air Mystery Ship, Slovak said. But Slovak said that photographs he has seen of the plane made it look unstable--too heavy in the front end. Van Ausdell reportedly had come in to the runway attempting to land the craft but the propeller hit the runway causing the plane to flip, Slovak said.

“It could have happened to anyone,” Slovak said. “It could have very well been me or someone else here and you could have been talking to Van [instead].”

Gemco Aviation Services in North Lima spent as much as $180,000 to restore the rare Travel Air Mystery Ship that Van Ausdell was flying. The aircraft had been unveiled Monday, and Van Ausdell was set to transport it to the Staggerwing Museum in Tullahoma, Tenn. Museum officials would not comment on the crash.

Staggerwings, the first airplanes commercially produced by Beechcraft, were manufactured from 1932 until 1944. The biplanes were called Staggerwing because, unlike conventional biplanes, Staggerwings’ top wing was positioned behind the bottom wing. The configuration made them ideal for slow landings and takeoffs, but the design also helped them perform at high speeds, Schreffler said. Only a handful of Travel Air Mystery Ships were ever built. The plane was built in part by a Beechcraft founder and was a predecessor of the Beechcraft planes.

Van Ausdell, a member of the Staggerwing Museum Foundation, owned a late-model Staggerwing that formerly belonged to the great uncle of Bruce Dickenson, vice president of the Santa Paula Airport Assn. board of directors.

“He was an excellent pilot and a magnificent man,” said Dickenson, who had known Van Ausdell for 27 years.

Van Ausdell is survived by a daughter, Connie, and two sons, Bob Jr. and Tom.

During World War II, Van Ausdell flew B-25 bombers in the Pacific, and after the war he became a pilot for TWA.