National Post (National Edition)
A dream fulfilled: Spitfire built in garage
‘I’m getting used to acrobatics,’ Briton says
Like many other small boys, Alan James’s childhood passion was to build aircraft models, inspired in his case by the ones he watched take off at the RAF base near his home in Reading, southern England.
As a grown-up, he’s gone one better and built a Spitfire plane in his garage.
However, it took more than just plastic and glue to put together this version of the fighter plane, which did so much to save Britain from German invasion during the Second World War.
James was forced to search across Europe, Canada and the United States for the specialist parts and materials required to complete his project.
But now, many hours and £18,000 ($30,000) 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.
“So I thought about it and realized I could spend that money on building one.”
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 18-feet by 10-feet garage at his home in Reading into his DIY aircraft plant.
He sourced a 100hp RollsRoyce 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 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 manoeuvres 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 fullsize planes interest me, too,” he said. “It occurred to me that in many ways, this type of airplane is really only a scaled-up model.”
However, he did concede there was a little more to it than 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 160 mph, 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 Isaacs 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 manoeuvres.
“I’m flying most weekends,” he said. “It’s a little scary but I am getting used to doing aerobatics.”