Pair Take Old Planes Under Their Wing

Ten years ago, Rowena Mason spent her days locked in a small room in Santa Clarita entering data in a computer.

Today, the 32-year-old Santa Paula resident spends her days restoring antique airplanes.

“I used to be miserable,” Mason said. “But now I feel very lucky, and I could never go back.”

Mason and her husband, Pete Mason, own a small business at the Santa Paula Airport where they restore antique airplanes. Often the couple, who are both pilots, buy airplanes that no longer fly and restore them from scratch, Rowena said.

In their Santa Paula workplace, the room is cluttered with buckets of paints, boxes of tools, piles of fabric-like materials used to cover wings and several large pieces of airplanes.

In a corner is an old sewing machine that Rowena uses to sew covers for airplane wings and rudders.

“The majority of the parts in old airplanes are not made of metal. They are made of a fabric-like material called Dacron,” Rowena said.

After placing the fabric around the frame of a wing, for instance, she spends hours applying at least 20 coats of a protective sealant to make it thick and firm, she said.

But when it comes to replacing the engines, it’s Pete Mason who does most of the work, Rowena said.

Among the couple’s favorite restored planes is a 1941 Stearman that was used by the U.S. Army to teach cadets how to fly during World War II and a 1956 Piper Pace that is now the family plane, said Pete Mason, a native of Santa Paula.

The couple also have two Piper Pacer airplanes from the 1950s that they plan to restore. “It takes a long time to restore a plane from scratch,” Rowena Mason said.

Besides restoring airplanes, Pete Mason operates an aerial banner towing company and often flies banners over Ventura County.

Joining the couple at their workplace is their son, Sam, 2, who spends the days watching planes arrive and depart and whose toys clutter the large work room.

“The greatest part of this job is that we can keep Sam with us the whole day long,” Rowena said.