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So today I arrived home safely,  the only minor problem I guess is the slight jetlag I have now. It seems I am not that good anymore in sleeping in aircraft seats. Or maybe the fact that I left Seattle around 13:00 also has something to do with it, as at that time of day you are not so sleepy in general. Looking back at the last two weeks it has been a fantastic trip. I have met so many people that I knew already from forums. Now I know the faces behind all of the problems that get discussed … Continue reading Day 13: Travelling home

The DevCon and FanCon are now over for a few days already and since then I have been exploring the area around Seattle a bit more. On Monday I went to see Seattle Downtown and although it was a bit windy and wet, it was nice to walk through the city and feel the atmosphere a bit. In the afternoon I went to the Museum of History and Industry and I enjoyed the exhibition a lot. It basically tells the story of how the ciy developed since the first people came there and how the economy developed during that time … Continue reading Day 12: Olympic National Park

Today it was much more quiet on the FanCon, it seemed quite some people had already left. But this also had some advantages, for example that we could play a multiplayer Reno airrace mission with a group of developers. Although we could not do the mission in slew mode, it actually went quite well and it certainly was a lot of fun. After attending a very good presentation by Bill Womack about the possibilities of the new FsX materials (I guess I should ask him to put that explaination on the Wiki as well), we decided to go out and … Continue reading Day 9: AvSim FanCon day 2

The 2nd and 3d day of the DevCon kept me quite busy, so I did not write a new blog posts about them. But I can tell you that those two days were great as well. Learned a lot and spoken to a lot of interesting people. Yesterday was the 1st day of the Avsim FanCon and I enjoyed that a lot. There were quite some interesting presentations and I met more people that I know from the AvSim scenery design forums. It is so nice to have a face behind those forum user names now. I also gave a … Continue reading Day 8: AvSim FanCon day 1

 So today was the first day of the DevCon, my main purpose of this travelling. On this blog I can not talk about all the actual stuff being discussed there, as we are under NDA for that. But I certainly did meet a lot of interesting people. I am sure I will forget to mention somebody here, so sorry if I forgot you. For example I met Bob Bernstein and Bill Womack, two people I know for years already from different internet fora for scenery designers. It was really nice to talk with them in person. I also met different … Continue reading Day 5: DevCon 1st day

Today I went to the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field in Seattle. I have seen quite some aviation musea by now (for example Duxford in the UK, Aviodrome in the Netherlands), but this one also has a very good collection. And also the volunteers working there are very friendly and have great stories to tell you about the aircraft. Besides all the “usual” pieces that you will find in almost every aviation museum (like a DC-3, Piper Cub, etc) there were also a lot of pieces that made the visit very interesting. For example there was a section about … Continue reading Day 4: Museum of Flight

 Today I visited the Future of Flight Center and took the Boeing Tour. The center itself has a nice display that explains the history of the Boeing civil aircraft and also shows you something about the materials used, the engines, etc. This all is mixed up with a lot of videos and other interactive displays, they sure know well how to present things. And if they had a change to write down that their aircraft are better than Airbus, they certainly did so on the information panels. The only negative thing for me was that, being an aeronautical engineer, there … Continue reading Day 3: Boeing Factory

So the daylight saving time ended today in the US. That was a little bit of a surprise to me, as it already ended last week in Europe. This explains why there was only 8 hours time difference with the Netherlands when I arrived yesterday. At least this meant the day was a bit longer than I expected. I decided to drive a bit around to enjoy the landscape, so I drove in the direction of the North Cascades National Park. Once I reached the park I walked around at various places, to enjoy the forest, river, etc. I must … Continue reading Day 2: North Cascades National Park

Here I am, sitting in Seattle with a jetlag behind my laptop. Today I flew from Amsterdam to Seattle with Northwest Airlines, so that I can attend the DevConf and FanConf events next week. But the first few days I will use to see a bit of the surrounding. I will try to post on this blog regularly while I am here, but only if I have experienced somthing interesting of course.