When Vance Breese takes to the skies, it is akin to a religious experience.

Flying his “autogiro” allows Breese to remain closer to the ground than most aircraft, affording experiences that he says are lost to the rest of humanity - riding on air currents that only the hawks can find.

“I realized I was touching what people can't see and what most people can't touch,” the 58-year-old Nipomo man said of flying.

Breese can be seen - and heard - buzzing the Central Coast in what appears to be a funny-looking helicopter.

He keeps the 1,400-pound Predator autogiro at the Santa Maria Public Airport, in a hangar he shares with a friend.

For James Bond fans, the aircraft seem familiar; a type of autogiro can be seen in the 1967 film “You Only Live Twice” in the form of Little Nellie. That craft, according to Internet Movie Database, is based on the Wallis Autogiro.

Breese purchased his aircraft, which he says is the only one of its kind, last fall from Mark Given, who designed and built it. The craft has a rotor diameter of 30 feet, and a Lycoming engine.

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It has a top speed of 97 mph, and can fly as high as 10,000 feet - though Breese said 2,000 feet over the beach at Guadalupe is the highest he has gone.

“I still believe that it's magic,” Breese said with a grin about the mechanics of the craft's flight.

He has 35 hours of logged flight time and 200 landings since October 2007. He is learning the lingo of talking to the control tower.

There are some key differences between an autogiro and a helicopter, Breese said, though they both are rotor-based aircraft.

An autogiro, he explains, cannot hover like a helicopter and its rotor is not powered by a transmission but rather the wind. Also, an autogiro lacks a tail rotor, which helicopters need to keep from spinning from the torque of the main rotor.

Talking with Breese about his autogiro and what it's like to fly, the conversation is filled with romantic notions and phrases that reveal his passion for his new hobby.

Breese's ability to fly, however, is no small feat.

In 1995, while racing a Harley Davidson streamlined motorcycle - motorcycles are his first passion - he was involved in an accident that almost killed him and left him with a brain injury.

Traveling 265 mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, he crashed and was actually pronounced dead due to no brain activity, he said.

But today, Breese drives a car, walks with no obvious problems and owns his own software company. Much of the day-to-day activity for Santa Maria Software - which sells Counterman, a point of sale program designed for the motorcycle stores - is left up to his employees. That, he jokes, allows him more time to fly.

He works hard to “mitigate” the challenges he faces, such as severely limited short-term memory, trouble multitasking and monocular vision.

Breese likens brain injury to living inside a small box that with work can slowly get bigger.

“Expanding the box becomes paramount,” he says.

Breese attends a weekly brain injury group at Jodi House in Solvang as part of his ongoing recovery efforts.

The facility offers a place for people with brain injuries to come together and reconnect with others, says Joanna McLean, program coordinator for Jodi House.

Though the brain may be injured, it can be retrained using various exercises such as crossword puzzles, Sudoku and word games, McLean said.

“Anything that makes you multitask or think of vocabulary that you used to use,retrains those pathways and makes them efficient again,” she says.

Breese's accomplishments since his injury have made him an inspiration for others in the program, she adds.

“A lot of people can't drive, and just being able to drive is a big deal,” McLean says. “And here he is flying.”

Breese is unable to fly fixed-wing aircraft, but was able to receive a medical clearance for his autogiro from the Federal Aviation Administration.

The FAA grants a Statement of Demonstrated Ability (SODA) to people with disabilities who can show that they can safely operate an aircraft.

“Physical limitations do not necessarily preclude people from flying,” wrote FAA spokesman Ian Gregor in an e-mail.

Depending on a person's limitations, the government may place restrictions on their flying, Gregor notes, such as not allowing a deaf person to fly in an area that requires radio communication with an air traffic control tower.

To obtain his clearance, Breese took a test flight with an FAA inspector in Buckeye, Ariz.

Gregor points out that SODAs are “fairly common,” and many are granted for pilots such as Breese who are blind in one eye.

For Breese, just flying the autogiro is not enough; he hopes to make the hobby more accessible to more people. As a result, he is working to develop an autogiro design that would run on a Harley engine - finally melding his two passions. He is on his third concept design.

“I hope to give people (an autogiro) that is easier to fly,” he says, “cheaper and sounds like a Harley - so it's cool.”

Malia Spencer can be reached at 739-2219 or mspencer@santa

mariatimes.com.

January 20, 2008