Wendell Davenport is an adventurer. An 81-year-old adventurer, that is.

“;I'd be blessed if I have the energy he has when I get to be his age,”; marveled 65-year-old golf partner Jim Barnoske.

“;For an old guy, he's pretty sharp,”; quipped George Read, 74, a longtime high school friend from Palo Alto, Calif. “;Wendell's young for his age. He's a Renaissance man - an accomplished artist and pilot, and a good raconteur.”;

The former owner of a graphic design studio has brushed shoulders with the likes of British author Aldous Huxley and the archbishop of Canterbury, and was employed by William Hewlett and Dave Packard, founders of the international technology firm Hewlett-Packard. He worked for Allan Starr and knew Stewart McCombs Jr., before they founded the local advertising agency Starr Seigle McCombs (now McNeil Wilson Communications).

The Makiki resident toured France on his bicycle last year, and he continues to regularly fly interisland in his prized two-place tandem airplane, “;Dragonfly.”; (He has a second, open-cockpit airplane, “;Fly Baby,”; hangared in Riverside, Calif., which he flies extensively on the mainland.)

As a child, the San Jose, Calif., native would take Sunday afternoon trips to the airport with his father to watch the Depression-era barnstorming pilots. “;The sight of an airplane leaving the ground was the next thing to a miracle,”; he recalls. “;It was for me a kind of metaphor for freedom.”; The young Davenport was hooked.

At 18, he became an active-duty cadet during World War II, but didn't see any action. “;They had no use for me,”; he said, disappointed. But that's when he got his student pilot license, and after that, his private license in 1946.

Today he's among eight local members of the United Flying Octogenarians, a group of current or former aviators over age 80. “;I think our oldest member (in New York) is 101,”; noted Davenport.

Davenport and his wife, Clare (a pathologist at Queen's Medical Center who died about 15 years ago), married in 1953 and had four children: Scott, 53 (a physicist in California), Janet, 49 (a schoolteacher in Kailua), Peter, 48 (a craftsman on the North Shore), and Jim, 44 (a drama teacher in New Zealand). He has three grandchildren.

The couple moved to Hawaii in 1956 at Clare's suggestion and fell in love with “;the crystal blue atmosphere ... the colorful muumuus ... I just felt this place was for me.”;

When he first arrived, Davenport struggled as a freelance commercial graphic artist, but eventually was able to open his own ad agency, Davenport Design, from 1962 to 1982.

On the side, he would indulge his love of “;taildragger”; airplanes (so-called because the rear weight is supported by a single wheel, or skid), and even built a Volmer Amphibian in 1971, which he named “;Lanikai Manu”; (”;Heavenly Sea Bird”;).

He did have a scare in the skies on Labor Day of the following year in Kaupo, near Hana, Maui, when the engine failed and he had to ditch the plane in the ocean and climb the steep rocks to safety.

“;I only realized then that I had a fear of heights,”; Davenport noted wryly. “;If there's nothing between me and land I'm fine, but if I'm connected to something, I'm terrified.”;

Some Kaupo Ranch workers guided him back to civilization, but the Volmer was dashed to bits on the rocks.

No worries - Davenport found another aviator who had made the same plane (using the same plans), and bought it from him, christening it “;Lanikai Manu II.”; It was this plane that he flew in on Kauai the 1977 Paramount Pictures film, “;Islands in the Stream,”; starring George C. Scott and British actress Claire Bloom (”;the most gorgeous woman I've ever seen”;).

It was his first and only time flying for a movie (and the several months' filming time typically got edited into a few, short, but critical scenes in the final cut). The experience led to another aviation accident.

“;The movie company had installed a large 'cowling' around the engine on top of my plane to make it fit the style of the time, which was the 1930s. Unfortunately, it interfered with the engine's cooling system,”; recounted Davenport.

“;On the second day of filming, two magnetos gave out, and I had to make a forced landing in the surf just off the beach in front of the camera crews and actors. In fact, George C. Scott was one of the first to help rescue the plane from the reef.”;

A mechanic who had helped design the cooling system apologized to Scott for “;stealing”; his scene.

Scott replied, “;Oh that's all right, there'll be others.”;