Not much painting tonight

I did some painting tonight.  I did not finish anything, but I worked on a wardog and a unit of widowmakers.  I had hoped to get in a game on Vassal, but for various and sundry reasons, it just didn't happen - too much stuff on my end.  It's also why I did not paint much - a bunch of interruptions made it such that I only painted in 5-10 minute bursts.  Hard to get anything done in that kind of time frame.

I also got distracted.  See, I am a man of many hobbies.  Well, several, anyway.  There is a reasonable chance that this weekend will give me a chance to indulge in one of them.  And what hobby is this, you ask?  I like to build and launch model rockets, and this weekend, there is a launch about 90 miles away.

Now, I can launch pretty much any day of the week, but there are some fairly significant restrictions.  I can't launch anything that will fly higher than 1,000 feet (without FAA clearance), and, at the moment, I don't feel comfortable launching anything that will go over 750 feet or so, just because I do not have access to a field that will reasonably accommodate that kind of altitude.  I like to have 1 foot of horizontal clearance for every foot of projected altitude - so anything going up 750 feet means I want to have an area roughly equal to a circle 1,500 feet in diameter.  That's bigger than it seems.  So, until now, I have been launching tiny little rockets with nothing larger than a C motor.

Anyway, the launch this weekend has a standing waiver for 12,000 feet of clearance.  I'm not certified to any motor strong enough to launch a rocket anywhere close to that distance, but I do have a couple of kits that should blast past the 1k mark.  Unfortunately, they are not built - or rather, were not, since I am in the process of building three of them.  I just need to have them built by Wednesday night, so that I can paint them on Thursday.

(Then, Friday I can drive for a couple hours, so that I can run a marathon on Saturday, and then drive home.  Sunday, I can then go and launch some rockets with my son.)