MANITOWOC (NBC 26) — Years of hard work, they sometimes pay off. For one Manitowoc man, an airplane brought him a crowning achievement that very few get to claim.
- Randy Rettler won a bronze "Lindy" for third best homebuilt plane at EAA.
- Rettler is from Manitowoc and says he was convinced by a friend to enter the competition.
- He says he plans to travel to the other 49 states and the Carribean in his plane named "Charlie".
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story)
Randy Rettler is a family man from Manitowoc. In his downtime, he built an airplane from the ground up.
"Most of what you build will outlive you, so how do you want to be remembered,” Rettler said.
He said he just wanted to build the plane, nothing else, until he was convinced to enter a competition for best home built plane at EAA.
Judged alongside more than 400 other aircraft just last month, he won bronze. He was the only winner from the state of Wisconsin this year.
"It felt really good, I was humbled,” said Rettler. “But at the same time, I worked hard to achieve that."
The award he won?
A bronze Lindy, named after Charles Lindbergh himself.
It's given to only the best of the best planes that make their way to Oshkosh. But Randy says he has plans for his plane that will take him far beyond Northeast Wisconsin.
"The plan from the beginning was 49 states and the Caribbean, me and my wife,” says Rettler. That was the plan, we'll see how far we go with that, but that's our goal."
Randy tells me while it certainly takes time to hone wings and a propeller, it was the sound research that went into the entire project and making sure the plane would fly that took him the longest.
