The money shot.
Front left low, the Long EZ has had a long, but anything but easy life. Many, many hours are in the plane already. Ben's room may not have the best lighting, but the EZ doesn't mind.
Key features to note are: retractable nose gear, lightening holes through the extended nose blocks, carbon fiber laminate on top and bottom of canard, and initial stages of wheel pant construction.
Total working time is around 90 hours.
After discovering mom's food vacuum packager could bag balsa to foam cores, I completed the six wing panels you see taped together in these shots. I have yet to bag the blue foam winglets.
The canard also is taking shape, though no elevator is attached yet.
At the time of the photos, total working time is around 40 hours.
Obligatory top corner shot showing general shape of plane. This is plane less rudder, servos, and lots of more sanding.
Time to this point: 90 hours.
Looking down the nose. Top corners have been rounded. Bottom corners just beveled, showing the progression from edges to smooth, blended sides. Bubble canopy looks great with the roundness of the nose.
Note how the canard is blended into the nose. A separate piece and a separate hatch allows the canard to be removable with still flush contours. Clear scotch tape will seal the cracks when finished.
Sigh, the nose block needed lightening holes to further remove weight from the nose. I planned to put the rx battery in a compartment in the nose.
You can clearly see the carbon spar added to the canard to prevent flex. The kit calls for 2 layers 2oz fiberglass, but I thought it needed more for strength. The canard tips are upturned, as yet another scale detail.
The nose gear on the real plane sits about 30 degrees off verticle, but I could only find 90 degree retracts for my rc model.
Really early picture (or so it seems). You can see the blue foam cores of the winglets before they were sheeted..
I later added 1.5" to lengthen the nose. Most Long EZ's come up tail heavy, so extending the nose is a easy solution around adding balast. Unfortunately, the plane needed 1/2 pound of lead balast to balance with the radio battery in the nose. The rx pack is now underneath the wing.
The new winglet, finally after some more work. From this picture, you can see ten individual pieces make up the winglet. What you can't see is that the main body is an airfoil and the balsa block on the bottom is also an airfoil. The winglets have two solids days of work in them to this point. They still need final shaping with filler and more sanding.
A note to the interested: the rudders move outboard only. Given that any surface deflection creates drag, a left rudder input by the right winglet (so opposite side to the turn) creates adverse yaw. This means the right rudder input causes drag on the right side of the plane, giving a tendency to yaw the plane right. Reread and think about this.
I have plans to make the winglets removable for easier transportation. Otherwise, I need a wing box to protect them from being broken off accidentally.
Radio compartment without servos. The two horizontal beams in the fuselage will hold four servos (left to right): canard, airbrake, nose gear retract, nose wheel steering. The black rectangle in the center is a switch for the airbrake to activate landing lights.
The aileron servo is mounted upside down in the wing and the rudder servo will go next to it. The throttle servo will be mounted behind the whitish wing support running through the middle of the photo.
You can see the wheel well underneath the steel rod for the retract. It almost houses the entire wheel. Frustratingly, about 1/4" of the wheel sticks out of the fuselage when in the retracted position.
After much filling, sanding, and more sanding, the Long EZ is getting closer to completion. The wing is almost ready to be fiberglassed. No major mechanical changes have been made to the plane up to this point.
Total time to this point: about 130 hours.