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But now, many hours and £18,000 later, he has fulfilled his dream, taking to the skies in his homemade Spitfire.
“Like every true Briton I wanted to fly a Spitfire,” said James, 63. “Five years ago you could only get a flight in one if you enrolled in a two-day course. It cost £5,000 and you only got 40 minutes flying the Spitfire.
After paying £150 for the plans for the single-seater Isaacs Spitfire – which is 60 per cent the size of the original – to the Light Aircraft Association in 2012, James began turning his 18ft by 10ft garage at his home in Reading, Berkshire, into his DIY aircraft plant.
He sourced a 100hp Rolls-Royce engine in the Netherlands, which he managed to re-assemble, and bought a set of wheels on eBay. The seatbelts were specially made in the U.S., but the rest of the half-ton plane, including the fuselage, wings and propeller, was constructed by James himself.
To construct the wings and fuselage frame, James knew he needed spruce timber. “Spruce is the lightest and strongest wood in the world. It’s by far the best of the timbers,” he said.
So he turned to Dartmouth-based Stones Marine Timber, a firm that specializes in the construction of yachts and routinely sources honey-coloured Sitka spruce timber, which grows along the North American Pacific coast, to build masts.
Jim Stone, who lives on Vancouver Island and sources wood for the company, says the timber used to build the Spitfire was purchased from a mill in Alaska.
Stone said his company regularly supplies Sitka spruce for aircraft projects. The wood is also prized by instrument makers for pianos and guitars and was also used to make the oars for the Queen’s royal barge.
“It bends without breaking, whereas other timbers, they’re reasonably good but quite brittle and heavy. … I love it,” he said.
James had already learned how to shape and plane a wooden propeller, having previously built a Pietenpol Air Camper light aircraft, but he had to learn to cut and weld steel and aluminum.
Three years after starting work on the Spitfire, it was ready to fly, and after being given the go-ahead by the Civil Aviation Authority, who had checked it throughout construction, James took to the sky in September last year.
The Isaacs Spitfire has been flown by a former RAF test pilot to clear it for aerobatic maneuvers and James has now clocked up 60 hours flying time in it, having already flown 1,500 hours in his Pietenpol and other planes, including a Chipmunk and a Tiger Moth. James said he began building planes after it dawned on him that it was no different in principle to model-making.
“I like making model planes. I’ve been doing it since I was a lad, but full-size planes interest me too,” he said. “It occurred to me that in many ways, this type of aeroplane is really only a scaled-up model.” However, he did concede there was a little more to it that that.
“You cannot just build a plane and fly it. There are very strict rules,” said James. “The aircraft was inspected numerous times during construction and then checked again by a different inspector when completed to obtain CAA certification.” To date he has flown his Isaacs Spitfire, which has a top speed of 160mph, over the West Country, Northampton and the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately the plane has only one seat, so there is no room for wife Margaret, 59, or daughter Debbie, 29.
“My wife was the first one to go in the Pietenpol, but this is a selfish plane,” he said. “And Debbie used to come flying with me until she found boys, and that was that,” he added.
James has now given up his job as a driving instructor to teach others to build and fly similar replica aircraft. His project marks the first time an Isaac Spitfire has been made and flown since the prototype was built 40 years ago by John Isaacs, a retired schoolmaster.
Not content with that, James is now practising some more daring fighter pilot maneuvers.
PITTSBURGH (AP) — School officials in Pittsburgh say a kindergartener was found with a handgun on a school bus.
Pittsburgh Public Schools spokeswoman Ebony Pugh says the gun was found in the student’s backpack Monday after school was dismissed. The student attends the Pittsburgh Faison K-5 school.
Pugh says another student alerted the bus driver to the weapon, and the gun was removed without incident. She says parents were notified via the district’s phone system.
Starting Tuesday, Pugh says all students will be required to pass through the school’s metal detectors. Previously, only adult visitors and parents were required to do so.
Pugh says school police are investigating how the student came to possess the gun. She said in an email that “information related to specific charges” wasn’t available.
Make outdoor spaces safe with wide, smooth paths and ramps built to code.
In a home with an elderly or disabled occupant, safety precautions often differ from standard protocol. For a person with mental or physical limitations, having a home that she can safely move about in -- or escape from, if need be -- is a necessity and a comfort. Topics including emergency egress and reducing the chance of a fall, accidental poisoning and wandering can help you plan a safe haven.
Falls cause more injury deaths in seniors than any other injury, the California Department of Aging explains. Simply rearranging the furniture to create spacious paths for ease of maneuvering is a good start, but you may need to do more for someone with decreased mobility or vision. For example, where one type of flooring, such as tile, meets another, like hardwood, the height difference is a tripping hazard. Having one type of flooring installed right through is best, but sloped transition strips that gradually merge varied flooring heights can avert a fall. Examine transitions through the home, and at doorways and entrances.
For someone who suffers from dementia, cognitive impairment or a poor memory, medication overdosing is a serious concern. Talk to your pharmacist about blister packing numerous medications -- having them sorted or packaged into daily doses -- to get out of having to remember what to take when. Lock up medications to prevent an accidental overdose, and toxic household supplies, such as bleach and oven cleaner, to prevent poisoning or injury.
In the home of an occupant who may endanger himself or get lost by walking out the front door, such as someone with advanced Alzheimer’s disease, you have humane options for control. Never lock them in a room; instead, create safe zones, the Alzheimer’s Association suggests. Aids, including motion alarms, monitoring devices and a fenced yard with a camouflaged gate can help you manage the living area, says the association.
Even with a standard working fire alarm on each floor and in every sleeping room, an aging or disabled resident may not be safe. For someone with a hearing impairment, for instance, even the sound of a blaring alarm can go unheard. A strobe or light-signaling alarm, or vibration alarm is a better safety feature in special circumstances. As for a person who relies on a wheelchair or walker, or who is vision impaired, a clear, safe route of escape is imperative, but again, may not be enough. Plan ahead; alert neighbors of your disability, inform them of your main and secondary escape routes, and practice the escape occasionally. Placing a “Tot (or person) Finder” sticker on the window of a severely disabled person’s room can aid in a rescue, and offer a form of comfort.
Hordos, Lorna. "Home Safety Topics for the Elderly & Disabled." Home Guides | SF Gate, http://homeguides.sfgate.com/home-safety-topics-elderly-disabled-86570.html. Accessed 20 April 2019.
SURELY China's rulers never dreamed that a spiritual movement started by a former grain company clerk could turn into the most serious challenge to their authority since the pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989. But that is what the brutal suppression of the group called Falun Gong has accomplished.
Extensive media coverage of China's actions -- which have led to at least a dozen deaths, alleged death by torture, thousands of cases of abuse and the harassment of tens of thousands -- has blighted the human rights reputation of the government.
But little light has been cast on why so many people feel Falun Gong, founded seven years ago and now claiming millions of adherents, is worth dying for. Nor is it widely understood in the West that aspects of the movement, or cult, suggest that its followers are misled and its leader deluded, or even a fraud. In fact, a closer examination of Falun Gong's beliefs and practices challenges some of the easy assumptions about Beijing's behavior.
Falun Gong's founder, Li Hongzhi, was one of many professed masters of traditional Chinese breathing exercises, known as qigong, to emerge during a resurgence of the discipline in the late 1980's and early 1990's. The exercises are meant to focus the body's vital energy, which traditional Chinese medicine calls qi. This energy has its mundane uses, like improving one's health and sense of well-being. But there has always been a supernatural undercurrent to its cultivation, which has included the belief that qigong (pronounced chee-goong) can also be used to develop the ability to fly, to move objects by telekinesis and to heal diseases.
Mr. Li differentiated himself from other qigong masters by wrapping his regimen in a cosmology that promises salvation through the refinement of one's character until the body literally evolves into another form of matter. At that point, the saved person is capable of flying to paradise, which may exist out in the cosmos, or in another dimension.
He said interracial children are the spawn of the ''Dharma Ending Period,'' a Buddhist phrase that refers to an era of moral degeneration. In an interview last year, he said each race has its own paradise, and he later told followers in Australia that, ''The yellow people, the white people, and the black people have corresponding races in heaven.'' As a result, he said, interracial children have no place in heaven without his intervention.
He also included many of China's folk superstitions, making references to fox and weasel spirits, which make Falun Gong attractive to the masses. It offered a homegrown religion, not the staid, state-sanctioned Buddhism and Taoism, or the foreign feel of Christianity. And it did so at a time when religious interest was on the rise, as disillusioned Chinese sought spiritual solace in the aftermath of the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989.
MR. LI preaches a number of other peculiar doctrines, among them that the Earth is gradually being infiltrated by aliens. ''Some people you see walking on the streets are, in fact, not humans,'' he told followers last year. He reports seeing green, blue and multicolored beings in other dimensions, and says the magician David Copperfield can fly. Mr. Li claims that he, too, can fly, though he says it is against his enlightened nature to do so in public.
None of this is metaphorical. In an interview last year, Mr. Li said all of the things he talks about are real, though he is constrained in describing them by the limitations of human language. What makes such pronouncements more than harmless eccentricity is that Mr. Li also exhorts his followers to ''defend the Fa,'' or law, as described by his teachings, praising those who confront China's often brutish state police.
Consider Jimmy Zhou, an accountant and immigrant to the United States, who returned to China late last year to help keep the banned movement alive. Soon afterward, he was arrested, beaten and humiliated for a week before being released.
That Mr. Zhou should have to suffer for his beliefs is an ugly commonplace of totalitarian societies, though in this instance that may well play into the hands of the movement the government is trying to kill.
Mr. Zhou insists, based on Mr. Li's teachings, that the French had discovered a two-billion-year-old nuclear reactor in Africa, evidence of a prehistoric civilization that practiced Falun Gong. Mr. Li's teachings also instruct Mr. Zhou that mankind has been ''left in complete destruction'' 81 times and that another round of destruction may be in the offing.
It is just this sort of theologizing that disturbs Chinese leaders. China has an uneducated, increasingly restive population, one historically prone to swift and often disastrous alignments behind charismatic leaders.
Nonetheless, Beijing's crackdown on the group was neither swift nor unconsidered. On April 25 last year, more than 10,000 Falun Gong followers surrounded Beijing's leadership compound on the 10th anniversary of the start of the 1989 pro-democracy protests. This amounted to a direct challenge to the party, and as such, Falun Gong's act was inherently political and certain to provoke a harsh response. Beijing claimed that the demonstration was orchestrated by Mr. Li, who first denied, then admitted, being in China the day before.
Until that demonstration, however, Falun Gong was tolerated and even enjoyed the open support of some government officials. Millions of followers congregated in public parks and plazas across the country each morning for group exercises. The Chinese press grew increasingly critical of the group in 1998 and early 1999.
In May 1998, after Beijing Television broadcast a program critical of the group, Falun Gong followers besieged the station. The municipal government told the station to resolve the dispute before the sensitive anniversary of the 1989 pro-democracy killings on June 4, a date on which the government is wary of any gatherings. The TV station buckled, fired the reporter who had produced the program and broadcast a positive piece on Falun Gong.
In the following months, the group staged dozens of such actions across the country, culminating in the massive demonstration on April 25.
FALUN Gong has not been implicated in any violent acts, though Beijing clearly fears any mass movement it does not control. But it is particularly affronted by religious faith, which conflicts with the atheism that is the official creed of the party.
As a result, the regime has no moral credibility with which to fight an expressly spiritual foe. It cannot put forward its own view of spirituality, since it hasn't got one. The upshot is that the party is increasingly threatened by any belief system that challenges its ideology. If the followers of such a belief system demonstrate an ability to organize as well, the party may well feel it has no option but to attack it to retain its hold on power.
The number of flights fell last year to their lowest level since September 11.
Figures produced by NATS, which runs air traffic control, said it dealt with 1.5 per cent fewer flights in 2008 than in the previous year, while December's figure was eight per cent down on the previous 12 months.
The air traffic control figures are the latest evidence of the damage that the credit crisis has done to the airline industry.
Planes have been grounded and routes cut as airlines struggle to cope with the fall in passenger numbers.
Despite the evidence of a slowdown, the Department for Transport's projections for future passenger figures show a steady increase.
The latest official projections showing passenger numbers rising from 241 million passengers per year in 2007 to 465m in 2030.
Increasing passenger numbers was a key plank of the Government's push for a third runway at Heathrow and the NATS figures led critics of the development to suggest Labour was ignoring the reality of air travel.
"The Government's forecasts on aviation growth are pie in the sky," said Theresa Villiers, the Tories' transport spokesman.
"Labour is so hell-bent on building a third runway that it is completely blind to the facts.
"One can only assume that the recession will last so long and we will have so much free time that the Government will pay us to fly and stay out of mischief," said Richard George, climate spokesman for the Campaign for Better Transport.
"It is completely senseless. Villages are being ripped up on the basis of a dodgy graph."
CELTIC want to follow up their Freddie Ljungberg swoop with a sensational loan move for Tottenham defender Jonathan Woodgate.
Celtic are keen to sign Tottenham defender Jonathan Woodgate.
Express Sport understands that Neil Lennon is desperate to land the England international, providing he can prove his fitness.
Woodgate, who has also starred for Real Madrid, Leeds United, Newcastle United and Middlesbrough, has just returned after surgery on a long-running groin problem at the end of last season.
Spurs manager Harry Redknapp has already confirmed that he is willing to let the 30-year-old out on loan to regain his fitness between now and the end of the season.
Woodgate, above, isn’t registered in Tottenham’s 25-man Premier League squad and if a financial arrangement can be struck, then Redknapp is prepared to let him move to Celtic Park.
Celtic boss Lennon is keen to bring in two central defenders with Woodgate and, as Express Sport also first revealed, Nottingham Forest defender Kelvin Wilson in his sights.
Lennon failed to land Wilson in the last window but is hoping to get him for £1million this month as he enters the final six months of his contract.
If he isn’t successful then he will wait and sign the Forest star for nothing in the summer. Lennon confirmed talks are underway with £1million-rated Sporting Lisbon defender Marco Caneira but Woodgate and Wilson are the preferred options.
Sporting would like to do a swap deal involving Hoops striker Georgios Samaras, but nothing has been agreed as yet.
Sunderland’s Anton Ferdinand is another defender who has been offered on loan to the Hoops.
Canadian attacking midfielder Dwayne De Rosario has also been on trial but Lennon has now to decide whether to ask permission from FC Toronto to take another look at him. The Celtic boss also wants to off load in the window.
Glenn Loovens remains a target for ex-club Cardiff City and Marc Crosas and Samaras could both be shipped out.
FC Utrecht have also stated they expect to start talks with Celts over £500,000-rated Danish midfielder Michael Silberbauer within the next week or so.
Technical director Foeke Booy said: “We have had discussions with Michael’s agent and told him the price we want before he gets to work.
Janke was 6 for 9 and drove in seven runs in three of the Red Raiders’ Fox Valley Conference games.
Janke was 3 for 3 on Thursday with two doubles, a home run and four RBIs as the Raiders defeated Dundee-Crown, 10-1.
On Friday, he was 2 for 2 with two RBIs in a 10-0 win over D-C.
On Saturday, Janke struck out twice against Cary-Grove’s Quinn Priester, one of the top pitchers in the state, but doubled home a run in his last at-bat. Janke hit a line drive that bounced off the right-field fence, and the Raiders tied the score at 3. C-G won in the bottom of that inning.
1. Huntley (10-3): The Red Raiders almost grabbed a win against C-G’s ace Quinn Priester on Saturday. They can hit throughout the lineup and always have pitching depth.
2. Prairie Ridge (10-3): The Wolves took two of three games from Crystal Lake South, then took the first two from D-C in that series.
3. Crystal Lake South (6-3): The Gators had a rough outing Monday against Hampshire, but they outscored Prairie Ridge, 24-13, in their series. Junior lefty Jacob Bimbi shut out Prairie Ridge in five innings.
4. Cary-Grove (7-3): The Trojans split the first two games of their series against Huntley. Dymitri Kanellakis has been a spark in the leadoff spot.
5. McHenry (8-2): The Warriors took a pounding from Jacobs on Saturday, but bounced back with a big rally in Monday’s game, scoring six in the seventh inning for a 9-5 win. Pitcher Joe Kaminski continues to be one of the area’s best.
Great teammate: McHenry coach Brian Rockweiler appreciated the demeanor of starter Joe Kaminski after he was pulled from Monday’s game against Jacobs.
Kaminski had cruised through four innings with 10 strikeouts and only three balls put into play. The Warriors committed three errors behind Kaminski, and Jacobs took a 5-3 lead.
McHenry came back with six runs in the seventh to win, 9-5.
Old friends: Huntley first baseman Hunter Rumachik had a theory about hitting against C-G’s Quinn Priester, with whom he played several seasons on the Crystal Lake Cardinals. Rumachik looked for fastballs from Priester, who was hitting 95 mph on speed guns in their game Saturday.
Rumachik singled twice and was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded in the seventh to tie the score at 3.
When the Raiders’ runners gathered with coach Andy Jakubowski as Priester left the game with two outs, Rumachik tapped Priester on the shoulder and wished him well.
Help is coming: Jacobs coach Jamie Murray is missing two key ingredients to his team in third baseman Bryce Vincent and pitcher Anthony Wilson, both of whom he hopes are back within the next month.
Vincent suffered a fractured right ankle and is wearing a stability boot. Wilson suffered a torn ACL in football season and recently was cleared. He was in the Golden Eagles’ rotation last season.
Vincent has been taking some swings to get ready. Jacobs is hoping he returns by May 1.
Cary-Grove vs. Crystal Lake South: The teams start their series Thursday at C-G in what is scheduled as an abbreviated start for Priester. The rest of his starts are slated for him to go as long as he can.
McHenry vs. Huntley: Both teams had only one FVC loss heading into Tuesday’s games. They battled it out for the title last year, and they start a three-game series Thursday at McHenry.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Matt Quatraro is the new third base coach for the Tampa Bay Rays.
The team announced the addition to manager Kevin Cash’s staff on Tuesday.
Quatraro takes over the job held the past three seasons by Charlie Montoyo, who recently was promoted to bench coach.
Quatraro is a former player, coach and manager in the Rays’ minor league system. He spent the past four seasons working for the Cleveland Indians as major league assistant hitting coach.
Like every version of Windows before it, Windows 10 has its share of standout features, and a few niggles here and there. If you're working with the Technical Preview, you may have seen our earlier guide to removing the desktop watermark. But this is not the only thing that can be irritating, you may be frustrated by the requirement to enter your password to login every time you power up.
As with previous versions of Windows, you can configure Windows 10 so that you are logged into your account automatically. This is great if you are the only person using your computer as it shaves valuable seconds off the startup process. If you're sick of typing your password, here's how to bypass Windows 10's login screen and log into your account automatically.