[DeTomaso] Fwd: Edward Nauman - Fast Eddie

[Mike Drew]

> Gentlemen
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> It is with a very heavy heart that I email you some very sad news. 
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> "Fast Eddie" Nauman has been a member of this forum for many years; his Pantera was #2100, but what really made him stand out was his incredible sense of engineering humor.  He's the guy that built a fully-automatic beer can crusher where he could throw a can into a hopper in any one of several rooms or his garage; it would detect the can and launch a vacuum system that would suck the can up and transport it at high speed through the house, into the backyard, where a crusher would crush it and then neatly deposit it into a can.  He lived in Palmdale and was a full-on Harley biker, as well as a top-level engineer at the Lockheed Skunkworks.
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> Eddie passed away on January 1st.  Although he had been in somewhat regular contact here on the forum, he never let on that he was diagnosed with cancer and had five nasty tumors  discovered way too late.  He was only 61 years old.
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> The memorial is tomorrow in Palmdale CA.  Feb 3rd 2017.  
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> Ed was a fascinating guy, nothing short of an engineering legend and a hero.  One very clever inventor and a man of rare talent and skill. 
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> Not many can claim to have had a hand in designing Lockheed Skunkworks products such as the original F-117 Stealth Fighter. F-35 Raptor etc.  Back in the early 2000s when I was flying out of LAX, thanks to my Top Secret clearance Eddie was able to give me a private tour of the Skunkworks and show me some of the projects he was working on--truly fascinating stuff.  But his at-home stuff was at least as fascinating, including the aforementioned beer-can crusher (years ago I posted a link to a Youtube video showing it in action but I can't find it now), and his acoustic cannon--a home-made cannon that only makes noise, rather than launching a projectile.  The first time he fired it off in his backyard, it broke all the windows on the back of his house, the shock wave crushed the wall and cracked the stucco, and the police department was flooded with calls from people fearing a terrorist attack!
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> So sad that he has been taken from us so soon.  I hope you are all doing well.  Life's short, live each day. 
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>    Mike 
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