Ernie and Jeanne Lietzan’s Van’s RV-10 is anchored to their family’s Navy and aviation history. The family’s aviation leanings were introduced by Jeanne’s father, Len Spychalla. “I grew up with small airplanes,” said Jeanne. “My dad managed the Antigo, Wisconsin, airport for a while and was always an airplane enthusiast. He would frequently give me rides, very often to visit my cousins in Milwaukee.”
Adds Ernie, “My father-in-law was EAA number 147. He was running the Antigo airport, in 1953, when Paul Poberezny came through and asked, ‘I’m doing this organization [EAA], do you want to be part of it?’ Len said, ‘Sure.’”
Len introduced Ernie to homebuilding in 1978. “We talked often about building an airplane,” said Ernie. “We never started a project but one thing was sure, he wanted nothing to do with composite designs. He worked around airplanes his whole life and developed an allergy to epoxy resins. He was also old school and a bit suspicious of composites, as was the FAA at the time.”
Ernie’s father, Ernest W. Lietzan Jr., brought the Navy tradition into the family. A 1954 graduate of the Naval Academy, he served 25 years in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). Though not a naval aviator, Ernest’s service laid the foundation for what has become a common sight in the Lietzan family: Naval Academy diplomas and wings of gold. Three of the Lietzan’s six children became naval aviators—two via the Naval Academy— and their youngest daughter, Anna, married a naval aviator.
Ernie and Jeanne’s four sons (Ernest IV, Alex, Matt and Paul) and two daughters (Jessica and Anna) grew up immersed in aviation. “Dad has been fascinated by airplanes for at least my whole life,” said Alex, the self-proclaimed “second and best son.” “He subsisted on yearly visits to EAA AirVenture, bringing us all in tow and thus engendering in us a love for airplanes. When my siblings and I were kids, a frequent weekend outing was to fly White Wings. They are paper airplanes designed by an engineer and launched by as many rubber bands as you can string together. They’ll fly for 30 to 90 seconds and go as high as you can imagine a 15-foot string of rubber bands can send them. We spent many evenings delicately cutting each part and gluing them together. Often there were stacks of books littering the dinner table, weighing down the newly glued pieces so that the construction would be as robust as possible.”
Paul, Ernie and Jeanne’s third son—a fraternal twin to their son Matt—claims a “reasonable obsession” with aviation from a young age. “I have lots of memories—I had a ring-bound encyclopedia of combat aircraft that included the F-14. Sport Aviation magazines and paper airplanes were all over the house. I spent hours flying P-38s and B-17s in a game called Air Warrior III, on this new thing called the internet. In sixth grade I wrote a research paper about the Wright Brothers. I probably attended AirVenture with dad every year from when I was eight until I left for the Naval Academy, in June 2005.” Paul also remembers the White Wings. “Dad spent hours helping me make White Wings. They were incredible paper airplanes, which we flew at a soccer field across the street.”
For Ernest Lietzan IV, memories of White Wings are just part of the white noise of growing up in an environment where aviation was ever-present. His decision to attend the Naval Academy was also a product of his environment. “I kind of got ‘frog boiled’ as a kid,” said Ernest. “Growing up, the pitch from my grandpa was to go to the Naval Academy, but it wasn’t a hard sell. By the time I graduated high school, it seemed like a really good idea.”
All of the Lietzan children received a Young Eagle flight on July 8, 1995, in an open-cockpit Steen Skybolt piloted by Jim Grist. Son Paul, who was 8 years old at the time, remembers going through the clouds like he was touching them. He also carries a regret from that flight: “After 10 minutes I told the pilot I wanted to land. Once we got on the ground, though, I knew I wanted to go back up.” Ernest IV’s “ah-ha” aviation moment was still a few years off.
The Build
After Jeanne’s father passed away, Ernie gravitated back toward fast glass designs but never started a project. “My dad put his dreams of building a plane on the back burner while raising us kids,” said Alex. In 2018 Ernie and Jeanne were at a Young Eagles rally, at Brennand Airport, in Neenah, Wisconsin, to get flights for their oldest grandsons, Caleb and Max. Keith Mustain, the airport’s owner and operator, was giving rides in his RV-10. Ernie remembers, “When I saw it I thought, ‘I think I just found it.’” The RV-10’s roominess was a major draw—Ernie’s sons are tall and all four seats of an RV-10 will accommodate a large person. He ordered the empennage a couple months later.
Of the build, Ernie says, “I enjoyed it a lot. It was very challenging, but very rewarding, very satisfying. Every RV-10 builder will tell you that the fiberglass part is the hardest. The whole cabin top is fiberglass. You put it on, you take it off. Put it on, take it off. It’s like picking up a canoe and shoving it in place, over and over and over again.”
“I custom-built an overhead cabin console of carbon fiber reinforced with Kevlar. It was an opportunity to use my mechanical engineering background. The console is cut out in the middle because my boys are 6-foot-5. I needed the headroom.” The forward portion of the console, between pilot and copilot, holds most of the switches. “I prefer a clean panel. The switches, except for the boost pump, are mostly fire and forget; once turned on they stay on throughout the flight. There’s no reason they need to be visible.”
Jeanne was a full partner in the build and worked the rivet gun side of the riveting task. “We’ve been married for 45 years,” said Jeanne, “and it’s for better, for worse or for airplanes.” With good humor, Jeanne struggled to define the most miserable part of the project. Was it sanding the paint in Florida in a full Tyvek suit? Fitting the empennage to the tailcone? Fitting the wings? Plunging headfirst into the footwell to install hardware on the rudder pedals? “I know more about airplanes than I ever wanted to know, and I have had the fun of watching Ernie follow his dream and succeed.”
If the upholstery looks like it belongs in an exotic car, there’s a good reason for that. “I was at an auto parts store,” said Ernie, “less than a mile from my house, and asked if they knew anybody who did upholstery. Turns out, a mile from my house is a world renowned…artist, really.” Manda Yost, of Manda Marie Upholstery, specializes in exotic foreign and classic cars. She had the airplane in her shop for close to a year. “She let me come in during the winter and work in her shop. That’s where the landing gear and engine were installed. Her husband Nick helped. They said, ‘We have a hoist. We can do this.’ It’s funny how you can casually ask someone something and a whole new world unlocks for you.”
Though Jeanne’s father wouldn’t get to see his daughter and son-in-law build an airplane together, his influence on the project went beyond cultivating their love for aviation and Ernie’s interest in homebuilding. “During the build,” said Jeanne, “there were many times we went to my dad’s tool chest in search of the perfect tool to get us out of a bind. More often than not, dad came through.”
The Paint
It should come as no surprise that Ernie and Jeanne’s extended family were involved in selecting a paint scheme, expanding the project’s generational influence to the youngest generation, their grandchildren. “When we were trying to come up with a paint scheme,” said Ernie, “I sent line drawings to the grandkids. They did not disappoint. Grandson Henry’s idea was mostly black with yellow/gold accents. At the time we were going through dollars as fast as we were going through rivets and we decided the plane must be made of solid gold. With Henry’s art as a starting point, we imagined just that: a solid gold airplane painted black, with the black paint eroding from the leading edges to expose the gold underneath. Jeanne wasn’t fond of that idea and suggested the scheme should represent the flying part of the family.”
“That concept was more artistic,” said Ernie. “We pitched the idea to a couple of shops, but none did that sort of thing. They recommended we call John Stahr of Artistic Aviation. We were batting ideas around with John over the course of a few weeks when Jeanne said, ‘What about this?’ We called John to tell him we had a completely new idea. He is a big naval aviation fan, a big Blue Angels fan, so this was right in his wheelhouse. He was very enthusiastic about the project.”
The initial plan was to have the RV-10’s base coat of blue applied before it was given over to Stahr for the artistic embellishments. Time quotes, however, ranged from 18 months to three years so Artistic Aviation took on the entire painting project.
To get the airplane to Stahr’s paint studio in Love’s Landing, Florida, it needed to be flown. “I am a low-time pilot,” said Ernie. “I did my flight training and got my license in Appleton, Wisconsin, in 2012, flew for an hour and a half and didn’t fly again until I finished the RV-10, in December of 2023.”
Ernie’s hours were logged in Cessna 172s and a Citabria. Fortunately, when it came time to transition into the RV-10, Ernie had the expertise of Eric Abraham, a flight instructor and award-winning RV-10 builder. Of Eric, Ernie said, “He’s been terrific. He is a great instructor. He was a little trepidatious about putting somebody basically brand-new [into an RV-10] because of its high performance. It was a handful for me at first. It still pretty much is, but I’m getting the hang of it.” Of the RV-10’s performance, son Alex says, “It’s an absolute rocket of an airplane. I can attest to its righteous performance.”
With Eric’s help, Ernie flew the RV-10 to Florida in May 2024 and Jeanne followed on a commercial flight. Ernie and Jeanne stayed for a week to help with sanding and grunt work. A few weeks later, all three flew back to Florida commercially and Ernie and Eric flew the eye-catching RV-10—a salute to the Lietzan family Navy service—home, to Appleton.
“I was the third of four kids. I was always my dad’s helper,” said Jeanne, her voice cracking. “I handed him wrenches, helped him move furniture. I think of him almost every time I see the airplane Ernie and I built, especially when I sit in it. I know this project would have been so interesting to him. He would have been proud to see it come to fruition and would have immense pride seeing how our naval aviation family has evolved. It’s been an amazing ride, and it is only beginning!”
