Foam cores

“A man’s got to know his limitations” is a great line taken from Dirty Harry, and so true in many ways.

from Dirty Harry (1971)

In my case, I was afraid that enlisting Gina in cutting the foam cores would have sadly stretched the limits of our nearly 30 years old vows beyond the “death do us part” clause.

Enjoyable perhaps, stressful for sure.

Enter… Eureka CNC.

I am sure most of you are familiar with the name, but should you not be, let it be known that Steve James, owner of Eureka CNC, built his own CNC hot wire cutting machine, and can reproduce a number of canard airplane parts with great precision. 

He is also a delightful person to deal with, and operates from Alamogordo, New Mexico, home of Holloman AFB, the same place where I did my T38B flying back in the day (1989).

Good times!

You might say that I am taking the easy way out, and missing out on a fundamental skill set of building a Long EZ, and I would partially agree, but there were other considerations that factored into my decision. 

For one thing, I’ve been married most of my life, I like it, and I wanted it to remain that way, so I didn’t have any desire to unduly burden my relation with Gina. Also, while profile accuracy might not be all that important on the fuselage section, it is very much so with the wings, canards, elevators, and winglets. 

I was after the most accurate foam cores available, regardless of who made them or where they came from, and in my humble opinion Steve is king. 

Price was a concern as always, but screwing up a few cores would have put me back in the same price range (though perhaps no longer married) as having Steve do them perfectly the first time, so I basically bought everything he had for sale. 

Gulp!

It might have taken a month or so to get the cores from Eureka CNC, and coincidentally they were delivered in my absence by my neighbor who works for FedEx, and has already helped me in the build a few times.

My good friend and neighbor delivering the goods

When I finally got to see them, I was astonished by the mountain of stuff I had purchased, and even more so by the quality of Steve’s workmanship. These parts are truly beautiful. 

Where the hell am I going to store all of this stuff?!

These Roncz canard and elevator sections are incredible

Wings and winglets parts

Dunno

More wing stuff

Still wing stuff, I think.

I'd have to guess winglet

??

How much wing stuff is there?

...and this is how I knew not to get Gina involved.

Wow again! Steve, you da man!

There was some very minor damage to the corner of one box, but nothing a little micro couldn’t easily fix.

Not bad at all

Gina wasn’t very happy to have me take over a bedroom with the new stuff, but as graciously as a New Yorker could muster when backed against a wall, she allowed the Trojan horse in.