LOL! You guys are great, I appreciate all the thoughtful comments. I've been lucky: 4,500+ hours in fighters and a couple hundred combat missions, 20+ years after that in aerospace worldwide and a lot of travel on the side. One wife and no kids, so a lot of toys.
As you can see, I finally got an avatar going so I'll try to catch up a bit:
1. Yes drew, in fact there are two "Rocket" models, one is derived from the RV-4 like you said and called a Harmon Rocket and the other is very similar but scratch engineered and called an F1 Rocket. Mine is an F1.
2. Dave: Love your guitar. Is that a National? I'll bet it sounds wonderful. My Dad was a career long country music radio broadcaster, so I grew up with a lot of that stuff.
BTW, just pulled all my console buttons out this morning. They ship to Lorenzo tomorrow, so my Coupe is hors de combat until next Friday or so. I'll be forced to ride one of these:
I'm thinking of shipping my 690 back over to Europe next spring. Met some great guys from Spain on the Isle of Man in May (policemen, actually---they gave me a Barcelona policeman's shirt!). Anyway, I'd really like to catch up with them and do some riding next year. Maybe if there is a Maserati meeting going on somewhere, I can make it to it. Little chance I suppose, but maybe I'll get lucky. I've been to the Ace 3-4 times with some English friends, but never on a car day.
Anyway, sorry to hog so much bandwidth. Great weather here in South Carolina. Has been for days: Perfect blue skies and 70 "real" degrees! Let's see; can't drive the Maser, the console's out. Can't fly the Rocket, I've got the tail wheel assembly out of it waiting on a new tire. Don't want to ride the 690---rode it yesterday. Guess I'll have to ride my new 2015 BMW 1000RR. Oh well, decisions, decisions! Oh, and sorry for the mess in the garage, I've got builders working during the week paying my wife off for my new Maser---she's getting a new kitchen. While they're at it, they are painting and mending a bunch of stuff. Their gear is everywhere!
Have a great day everyone!
Lee...