A word from James

Hello!

May I say a big thank you for visiting this site, I hope you're enjoying your visit and that it's been full of useful information and things to see. Without you, my valuable visitors, there'd be no site here! We couldn't have that, could we! I thought I might as well make this biography page to put a face to the site, just for anyone who wondered who ran it. If you have time to read it (which I hope you will), this page is about this site, intertwined with snippets about the hovercraft, the Concorde site, and finally about me (though that's the boring bit hehe).

Oh and by the way, I've decided to add free plugs to related websites of interest!

---

A brief history of the site and some history of the Hovercraft

This site was started back in 1999 and hosted on the then "Newsletters UK" domain run by my father. When we established that the site was actually getting hits, it was moved to this very domain. Six years and 150,000 hits after its creation, this is the site today. There have been visitors from all over the world, to date mainly from India, America and Great Britain; Users from all continents (except Antarctica, though I'm working on it) have browsed these pages and hopefully will continue to do so!

Originally James' Hovercraft Site started as a one-page, many picture site, created on FrontPage Express 2.0 (for all the webmasters out there, don't laugh!). With the ever increasing number of photos and diagrams that I added, I had complaints that the page was becoming way too long (which it was!). So I made the move, with the aid of newer web-site editing technology, to turn that one page into the navigable site that is here today.

So far, this site has been an entirely non-profit, personal, venture, and this has kept true. Advertising pages are on here for free for anyone to use (so long as there's something hovercraft-related to be seen!).

When I could get my hands on video editing software and a faster internet connection (I had been running on a modem or ISDN for a good few years), I decided to start adding Videos to the site. These have proved to be very popular so far, and I will keep adding more when I get them.

When the SRN4 passenger hovercraft service run by Hoverspeed stopped in October 2000, I switched this site to partly being a history of "what once was", being based in Dover myself I went about trying to show the world what used to be a way of life for us Dovorians (it HAD to be, hehe, it was so loud!).

I think the old service ran from 8 in the morning till 8 at night (or something like that, correct me if I'm wrong), at least once every hour and in its prime, that would have been every quarter of an hour or less. I do miss the throaty roar of the four marine gas turbine Proteus engines and their huge propellers echoing off the cliffs as a craft came in or departed! Have a look at the videos pages to see what I mean!

Today of course we still have the oldest hovercraft service in the world still running in the UK between Porstmouth and the Isle of Wight across the Solent. Operated by Hovertravel and built by Hoverwork these craft, AP1-88s, run a regular service to and from the British Mainland (a crossing of about 10 minutes by hovercraft). But alas this is the only passenger hovercraft service left running in the UK today, but on the good side, it's a hovercraft service, so that means it's ace!

---

The Concorde Site

You might wonder what a site about Concorde is doing bolted on to this Hovercraft site? Well, when it was announced following the Concorde crash in Paris in July 2000, that Concorde was to be retired from service by British Airways, being a lover of all sorts of big technology and machines, I had a brainwave to create the Concorde site from images that I'd taken, or that I got people to send in. The page was created two weeks before the end of service, and by the end of the first week it had already had 4,000 hits and numerous images and videos sent in by visitors. Inevitably interest has died down about Concorde now and five years on the page has had no major updates for quite some time.

---

A little biography about me then

Finally here's a bit about me! Sort of a CV really, hope it's not boasftul!

I was born in 1985 in London, and upon moving to Dover in 1987 the day after "The Great Storm" (aka the Hurricane by those who were in it), my parents inform me that on our first trip to the seafront I stood at the end of the Prince of Wales pier in awe as the hovercraft roared past (those were the days).

Hovercraft

With the great and much appreciated efforts of my parents, and the hospitality of Hoverspeed, I have had multiple trips around the facilities at Dover Hoverport, from visiting the Control Tower, to the being shown around the engineering workshops, a craft under maintenance, going inside the skirt of the Princess Anne when she was up on jacks, crossing the channel in the cockpit of several craft, having a tour around the craft and much more that I can't think of at this moment!

Computing

My dad bought the family a computer in 1992. It was an IBM PS/2 (anyone remember it?), running Windows 3.1 with 2megs of RAM, a 40meg hard disk, and a 386dx processor. Either way, tinkering with this beast of a machine taught me the foundations for my interest in computing. Subsequent updates to keep with the times, and I make and fix websites for various companies. (Websites listed below!)

Flying & Gliding

In 1997 my cousin introduced me to Microsoft's Flight Simulator. Well. I was hooked! When I was old enough my parents booked me a trial gliding lesson at a nearly gliding club (Channel Gliding Club at Waldershare, Kent, UK - http://www.channelglidingclub.com/). Flying introduced a new aspect to me, the feeling of being free as an eagle - and it is amazing! Gliding led on to me having lessons in powered planes, and at the moment I'm doing my PPL at Lydd Airport (Lydd, Sussex - http://www.lyddairport.com/) when I can, I love it!

Sailing

Dover is a seaside town. And being a seaside town it has seaside activities (not just swimming!). So sailing became an interest for me from the age of 8. I did my RYA grades 1 to 3 at Invicta Sailing Club in Dover (I can't find a website for them). Nowadays though I only have one more qualification that being a VHF Authority to Operate certificate, however with the generosity of my ex-A-Level maths teacher Bob, I've experience in taking out his 22ft yacht, either around Dover Harbour, to the Varne Bank (a sandbank off Folkestone Warren) in the middle of the English Channel, to Margate (North Kent), to Boulogne (France), to Limehouse Basin (a very nice marina in London), and other random places. Not on my own, I've always been part of Bob's crew, and I've always enjoyed myself!

School

From 1990 to 1997 I was a little sod at St Richard's Roman Catholic Primary School in Dover, and from 97 to 2004 I studied at Dover Grammar School for Boys (http://www.dovergrammar.co.uk/) doing a random combination of subjects from Physics to Latin, a great 7 years I must admit! Here not only did I get the grounding to follow up a future at university, but also learnt new skills like playing the Keyboard, Piano and Guitar, and more of course!

University

Right now I'm an undergraduate student at Loughborough University, in Leicestershire. Loughborough is a quiet town between Leicester, Nottingham and Derby, and while it's not the busiest or most exciting of places, it's not that bad I guess! Anyway even with the student loan looming above my head, it's a great place! Very hard work, and with a seemingly 3:1 ratio of guys to girls, this university famous for its sporting facilities (and indeed it has very good ones! On last count, I think there are 19 or so outdoor sports pitches and goodness knows how many other facilities), isn't *too* bad. It's run more like a business though, never seen any high-up members of staff! Either way we have a fantastic department in terms of staff, and facilities.

But it's not all about work, I'm in several student clubs such as the Flying Club (Loughborough Students Flying Club http://www.lsflying.org/), Gliding club (http://www.lufbra.net/Club_Homepage.asp?clubid=3821) and Loughborough LINKS St. John Ambulance Unit(http://www.lufbralinks.org.uk). It's all good fun I guess!

Anyway, that's enough about me. If you've made it down this far, thank you!

---

Photos

Here's a few photos linked with my bio above.

	Me next to an aerobatic Pitts airplane, on a trial aerobatics lesson run by Alan Cassidy (competition winning aerobatics pilot http://www.worldaerobatics.com/)
	Concorde G-BOAG being taxiied behind the BA engineering workshops at London Heathrow Airport
	Dover Grammar School for Boys
	Dover Harbour from the air
	Dover Harbour from the Prince of Wales Pier
	My parents quayside at Limehouse Basin, London, after a sailing trip up the Thames.
	The Princess Anne and The Princess Margaret on their penultimate day of operation. This photo taken at Calais hoverport.
	My wonderful halls in uni. Honest, they're (despite looks!) the best halls on campus I'm sure!
	Me taking video of a MD-87 SAS airplane coming into land at Heathrow Airport, 2001.

St. John Ambulance Loughborough LINKS.

Thanks for reading! If you have time, do drop me a line using the Contact Form link on the left hand side. I like to know how visitors find the site, if there is anything I could do to improve it, or if anyone's got any photos, videos, or stories to tell about the Hovercraft or Concorde.

James Rowson
8th May 2006

To contact me please use the Contact Form on the left navigation bar or post an entry in the Guestbook