Lightning Strike, Silverlight 2 Beta 2, and Winamac

You may have noticed that our blog was down for a couple of days last week. Lightning struck our server and our IT folks worked around the clock to get training.atmosera.com back online. Most of the site is back to normal now and we’re working on the last 2% or so. A few blog entries were lost forever, including one I posted just before the storm detailing some recent updates to my downloadable Silverlight code samples. I wanted to post those again so everyone’s aware that they’re there.

A while back I published a Silverlight 1.0 page-turning framework in MSDN Magazine. Silverlight 2 Beta 2 exposed a bug in my code that has since been fixed. You can download a revised version of the source code here. If you used my framework to build page-turning apps of your own, simply replace the old copy of PageTurn.js with the new and you’ll be good to go.

I have also updated SilverLife and my Silverlight interop demo for Beta 2. I’ll be posting more updated samples this week.

I took Thursday and Friday of last week off and drove up to Winamac, IN for a jet event called Jets Over the Heartland. It’s one of the most popular summertime RC jet meets and is held at one of the country’s premier RC flying fields. The 800′ x 50′ runway can handle all but the very largest RC jets, and the surrounding terrain is flat and wide open. I did some flying of my own and spent a lot of time admiring the other jets, which included Lewis Patton’s big beautiful F-18, Larry Kramer’s hopped-up KingCat, Bob Violett’s award-winning F-86 Sabre, and many more. I also came home with a new ride of my own:

That’s Bob Violett, designer of the aircraft, on the left, and Dustin Buescher, who built the aircraft, on the right. Dustin taught me how to fly jets last year and continues to mentor me as I progress from jet rookie to jet pilot. Dustin is one of the best RC pilots I’ve ever seen and is a member of the U.S. national team that competed in the 2007 Jet World Masters last year in Ireland. The aircraft in the foregound is a BVM Bandit. The pitot tube sticking out of the nose is wired into the ECU (the unit that controls the turbine) to speed-limit the jet to 200 mph. Otherwise, the jet could fly so fast that sudden movements might rip the wings off. It’s a kick to fly and maybe one day I’ll be able to do 200 mph slow rolls 3 feet above the runway like Dustin. (Yeah, right!)