TOPJACK is a modular Jack Up barge with 250 tonne lift

capability complete with 36m legs. Capable for supporting a wide

range of disciplines including port construction, safe investigation

and piling operations.

Ravestein Container Pontoon B.V.

TYPE RCP-250 – MODULAR SELF ELEVATING PLATFORM

Specification Jacking System

 Type : Hydraulic cylinders

 Jacking Capacity (4x) : 250 Ton at 250 bar

 Locking : By means of hydraulic activated rotating locks Hydraulic Power Unit

 Type : Electric Hydraulic driven powerpack

 Controls : Remote control (incl. second cable control box)

 Capacity HPU : 2x 55 kW

 Location : In deck container, with small store Generator

 Type : Silenced packed Caterpillar or equal, self supporting

 Capacity : 220 kVa - On top of deck Container Classification:

 German Lloyds : GL 100A5 K(20) Self Elevating Unit, Coastal Water (or equal)

Options (not included)

 Positioning winches / Deck Crane / RCP Boarding System

 Swim end units / Spud Cans

 Additional Tanks and piping systems

 Backhoe Configuration

Contact

David Ravestein / Aernout Goedbloed

Ravestein Container Pontoon B.V.

Waalbandijk 26; 6669 MB Dodewaard (Holland)

Tel +31 (0)488 - 41 18 01

Fax +31 (0)488 - 41 26 47

E-mail info@rcpbv.com

Website www.rcpbv.com

Local Notice to Mariners

Number: 10/25. Date: 13th May 2025

Exmouth Outfall - Marine Operations - ABCO Divers

Notice is hereby given that ABCO Divers intend to commence work on the Exmouth Outfall Diffuser Pit Excavations and Install on the earliest date of 17th May 2025 on behalf of South West Water Ltd. The works are programmed to be completed by July 2025.

Jack Up Barge “Top Jack 1” in Teignmouth Port, will be towed from Teignmouth as early as Saturday to the outfall site to the east of Exmouth, which is off Straight Point.

Position:

50°36'14.43" N

003°21'30.90" W

The support vessels “Jenny D” and “Celtic Avenger” will be assisting the project throughout the operation. Works will involve excavations from the Jack Up Barge, diving activities and lifting operations to support the install of the outfall diffusers.

All marine users are asked to observe a 500m exclusion zone around the Jack Up Barge.

Vessels

“Topjack 1” – 250t Jack Up Barge – 17m x 24m

“Jenny D” – 21.6m LOA, 9.04m Beam – Multicat and Tug Vessel - IMO 9570905, MMSI 235075339

“Celtic Avenger” – 14m Crew Transfer and Survey Vessel – MMSI 232055392

Gen. David H. Petraeus; commander of NATO and International Security Assistance Force troops in Afghanistan; testifies in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington; D.C.; Mar. 15. ISAF; in support of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan; conducts operations in Afghanistan to reduce the capability and will of the insurgency; support the growth in capacity and capability of the Afghan National Security Forces; and facilitate improvements in governance and socio-economic development; in order to provide a secure environment for sustainable stability that is observable to the population. (Photo by U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Joshua Treadwell) (Released)

Arriving at Charlecote Park for an afternoon visit to this National Trust property in Warwickshire. The car park and overflow car park is opposite the main gates. But you don't enter via these gates. To the right of here was some wooden gates that was the entrance and exit.

We came via Stratford-upon-Avon.

Charlecote Park (grid reference SP263564) is a grand 16th-century country house, surrounded by its own deer park, on the banks of the River Avon near Wellesbourne, about 4 miles (6 km) east of Stratford-upon-Avon and 5.5 miles (9 km) south of Warwick, Warwickshire, England. It has been administered by the National Trust since 1946 and is open to the public. It is a Grade I listed building.

The Lucy family owned the land since 1247. Charlecote Park was built in 1558 by Sir Thomas Lucy, and Queen Elizabeth I stayed in the room that is now the drawing room. Although the general outline of the Elizabethan house remains, nowadays it is in fact mostly Victorian. Successive generations of the Lucy family had modified Charlecote Park over the centuries, but in 1823, George Hammond Lucy (High Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1831) inherited the house and set about recreating the house in its original style.

Charlecote Park covers 185 acres (75 ha), backing on to the River Avon. William Shakespeare has been alleged to have poached rabbits and deer in the park as a young man and been brought before magistrates as a result.

From 1605 to 1640 the house was organised by Sir Thomas Lucy. He had twelve children with Lady Alice Lucy who ran the house after he died. She was known for her piety and distributing alms to the poor each Christmas. Her eldest three sons inherited the house in turn and it then fell to her grandchild Sir Davenport Lucy.

In the Tudor great hall, the 1680 painting Charlecote Park by Sir Godfrey Kneller, is said to be one of the earliest depictions of a black presence in the West Midlands (excluding Roman legionnaires). The painting, of Captain Thomas Lucy, shows a black boy in the background dressed in a blue livery coat and red stockings and wearing a gleaming, metal collar around his neck. The National Trust's Charlecote brochure describes the boy as a "black page boy". In 1735 a black child called Philip Lucy was baptised at Charlecote.

The lands immediately adjoining the house were further landscaped by Capability Brown in about 1760. This resulted in Charlecote becoming a hostelry destination for notable tourists to Stratford from the late 17th to mid-18th century, including Washington Irving (1818), Sir Walter Scott (1828) and Nathaniel Hawthorn (c 1850).

Charlecote was inherited in 1823 by George Hammond Lucy (d 1845), who married Mary Elizabeth Williams of Bodelwyddan Castle, from who's extensive diaries the current "behind the scenes of Victorian Charlecote" are based upon. GH Lucy's second son Henry inherited the estate from his elder brother in 1847. After the deaths of both Mary Elizabeth and Henry in 1890, the house was rented out by Henry's eldest daughter and heiress, Ada Christina (d 1943). She had married Sir Henry Ramsay-Fairfax, (d 1944), a line of the Fairfax Baronets, who on marriage assumed the name Fairfax-Lucy.

From this point onwards, the family began selling off parts of the outlying estate to fund their extensive lifestyle, and post-World War II in 1946, Sir Montgomerie Fairfax-Lucy, who had inherited the residual estate from his mother Ada, presented Charlecote to the National Trust in-lieu of death duties. Sir Montgomerie was succeeded in 1965 by his brother, Sir Brian, whose wife, Lady Alice, researched the history of Charlecote, and assisted the National Trust with the restoration of the house.

East Entrance Gates

Grade II Listed

East Entrance Gates to Charlecote Park and Flanking Railings and Piers

Listing Text

CHARLECOTE

SP25NE CHARLECOTE PARK

1901-1/2/22 East entrance gates to Charlecote

18/03/97 Park and flanking railings and piers

GV II

Entrance gates and gate piers with flanking railings and

piers. 1861. By John Gibson. For Henry Spencer Lucy. Brick

with ashlar dressings and wrought-iron.

Paired round-headed gates have enriched wrought-iron work

including bands pierced with luces and cross-crosslets from

the Lucy Arms; flanking wrought-iron panels with finials are

attached to brick piers, each with ashlar plinth with roll

moulding, large quoins and entablature; the Lucy crest of

winged boar's head capping pier to left and griffin's head

capping pier to right were restored and reinstated in 1993;

both emerge from coronets on moulded bases with egg-and-dart.

Low flanking ashlar walls curve forward and have roll-moulded

coping and railings with enriched heads, the taller rails with

brackets and larger finials. Brick end piers, each with ashlar

plinth, angle pilasters with fluting and enriched capitals,

and cornice; semi-reclining wild boar. Property of the

National Trust.

(Charlecote Park leaflet on the Deer Park: 1993-).

Listing NGR: SP2623456382

This text is from the original listing, and may not necessarily reflect the current setting of the building.

sculpture - boar

Gen. David H. Petraeus; commander of NATO and International Security Assistance Force troops in Afghanistan; meets UK Prime Minister David Cameron at 10 Downing Street; London; Mar. 22. ISAF; in support of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan; conducts operations in Afghanistan to reduce the capability and will of the insurgency; support the growth in capacity and capability of the Afghan National Security Forces; and facilitate improvements in governance and socio-economic development; in order to provide a secure environment for sustainable stability that is observable to the population. (Photo by U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Joshua Treadwell) (Released)

A walk around Minterne Gardens in Dorset.

The garden walk is about 1 mile in a horseshoe shape.

You can take different paths on the last leg of the walk, we went on the upper path.

Signs around the gardens.

Sign - Exit only.

Information below from leaflet from Minterne Gardens:

The Minterne Valley, landscapped in the manner of Capability Brown in the 18th century, has been the home of the Churchill and Digby families for 350 years. The gardens are laid out in a horseshoe below Minterne House, with a chain of small lakes, waterfalls and streams. They contain an important collection of Himalayan Rhodocdendrons and Azaleas, with Spring bulbs, Cherries, Maples and many fine and rare trees; the garden is noted for its Autumn colouring.

Of particular note are the large plants of Magnolia Campbellii which flower in March and April, together with a profusion of spring bulbs. Many flowering cherries were brought from Japan in 1920 and the Pieris Forrestii with their brilliant scarlet shoots, originally came from Wakehurst. A very fine collection of Davidia Involucrata (the pocket handkerchief tree) produce striking bracts in late May and early June, when the streams are lined with primulas, astilbes and other water plants.

[1]

Broadway Tower was inspired by the famous Capability Brown and completed in 1799 from designs by the renowned architect James Wyatt. It was built for the Earl of Coventry as a folly to his Springhill Estate and dedicated to his wife Peggy.

Legend has it Broadway Tower was used as a signalling tower between Springhill Estate and Croome Court near Worcester, which can be seen from the roof platform.

Many famous people have had association with Broadway Tower, including Sir Thomas Phillips and the pre-Raphaelite artists William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Rosetti.

Broadway Tower is open to the public allowing you to travel into the past of this important building and visit the viewing platform constituting the highest point in the Cotswolds at 1089 feet or 331.6 metres altitude.

[2]

Broadway Tower is a folly located on Broadway Hill, near the village of Broadway, in the English county of Worcestershire, at the second highest point of the Cotswolds after Cleeve Hill. Broadway Tower's base is 1,024 feet (312 metres) above sea level. The tower itself stands 55 feet (17 metres) high.

The "Saxon" tower was designed by James Wyatt in 1794 to resemble a mock castle, and built for Lady Coventry in 1799. The tower was built on a "beacon" hill, where beacons were lit on special occasions. Lady Coventry wondered if a beacon on this hill could be seen from her house in Worcester - approximately 22 miles (35 km) away - and sponsored the construction of the folly to find out. The beacon could be seen clearly.

Over the years, the tower was home to the printing press of Sir Thomas Phillips, and served as a country retreat for artists including William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones who rented it together in the 1880s.

Today, the tower is a tourist attraction and the centre of a country park with various exhibitions open to the public at a fee as well as a gift shop. The place is on the Cotswold Way and can be reached by following the Cotswold Way from the A44 road at Fish Hill, or by a steep climb out of Broadway village. Near the tower is a memorial to the crew of an A.W.38 Whitley bomber that crashed there during a training mission in June 1943.

Claremont, also known historically as 'Clermont', is an 18th-century Palladian mansion less than a mile south of the centre of Esher in Surrey, England. The buildings are now occupied by Claremont Fan Court School, and its landscaped gardens are owned and managed by the National Trust. Claremont House is a Grade I listed building.[1]

Claremont estate

The first house on the Claremont estate was built in 1708 by Sir John Vanbrugh, the Restoration playwright and architect of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard, for his own use. This "very small box", as he described it, stood on the level ground in front of the present mansion. At the same time, he built the stables and the walled gardens, also probably White Cottage, which is now the Sixth Form Centre of Claremont Fan Court School.

In 1714, he sold the house to the wealthy Whig politician Thomas Pelham-Holles, Earl of Clare, who later became Duke of Newcastle and served twice as Prime Minister. The earl commissioned Vanbrugh to add two great wings to the house and to build a fortress-like turret on an adjoining knoll. From this so-called "prospect-house", or belvedere, he and his guests could admire the views of the Surrey countryside as they took refreshments and played hazard, a popular dice game.

In the clear eighteenth-century air it was apparently possible to see Windsor Castle and St Paul's Cathedral. The Earl of Clare named his country seat Clare-mount, later contracted to Claremont. The two lodges at the Copsem Lane entrance were added at this time.

Landscape garden

Main article: Claremont Landscape Garden

Claremont landscape garden is one of the earliest surviving gardens of its kind of landscape design, the English Landscape Garden — still featuring its original 18th century layout. The extensive landscaped grounds of Claremont represents the work of some of the best known landscape gardeners, Charles Bridgeman, Capability Brown, William Kent (with Thomas Greening) and Sir John Vanbrugh.[2]

Work on the gardens began around 1715 and, by 1727, they were described as "the noblest of any in Europe". Within the grounds, overlooking the lake, is an unusual turfed amphitheatre.

A feature in the grounds is the Belvedere Tower, designed by Vanbrugh for the Duke of Newcastle. The tower is unusual in that, what appear to be windows, are actually bricks painted black and white. It is now owned by Claremont Fan Court School, which is situated alongside the gardens.

In 1949, the landscape garden was donated to the National Trust for stewardship and protection. A restoration programme was launched in 1975 following a significant donation by the Slater Foundation. The garden is Grade I listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.[3]

Capability Brown's mansion, built for Lord Clive of India

The Duke of Newcastle died in 1768 and, in 1769, his widow sold the estate to Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, founder of Britain's Indian Empire. Although the great house was then little more than fifty years old, it was aesthetically and politically out of fashion. Lord Clive decided to demolish the house and commissioned Capability Brown to build the present Palladian mansion on higher and dryer ground. Brown, more accomplished as a landscape designer than an architect, took on his future son-in-law Henry Holland as a junior partner owing to the scale of the project. John Soane (later Sir John Soane) was employed in Holland's office at this time and worked on the project as a draftsman and junior designer.[4] Holland's interiors for Claremont owe much to the contemporary work of Robert Adam.

Lord Clive, by now fabulously rich Nabob, is reputed to have spent over £100,000 on rebuilding the house and the complete remodelling of the celebrated pleasure ground. However, Lord Clive ended up never living at the property, as he died in 1774—the year that the house was completed. The estate then passed through a rapid succession of owners; first being sold "for not more than one third of what the house and alterations had cost"[5] to Robert Monckton-Arundell, 4th Viscount Galway, and then to George Carpenter, 2nd Earl of Tyrconnell, and finally to Charles Ellis, 1st Baron Seaford.[citation needed]

A large map entitled "Claremont Palace", situated in what is called "Clive's room" inside the mansion, shows the mansion and its surrounding grounds; giving a detailed overview of the campus. The map likely dates back to the 1860s, when the mansion was frequently occupied by Queen Victoria (thus it having been christened "palace"). However, the exact date is still unknown. The relief in Claremont's front pediment is of Clive's coat of arms impaled with that of Maskelyne, his wife's family.

Royal residence

In 1816, Claremont was bought by the British Nation through an Act of Parliament as a wedding present for George IV's daughter Princess Charlotte and her husband Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. At that time, the estate was valued to Parliament at £60,000: "Mr Huskisson stated that it had been agreed to purchase the house and demesnes of Clermont... The valuation of the farms, farm-houses, and park, including 350 acres of land, was 36,000/; the mansion, 19,000/; and the furniture, 6,000/; making together 60,000/. The mansion, which is in good repair, could not be built now for less than 91,000/."[6] To the nation's great sorrow, however, Princess Charlotte, who was second in line to the throne, was, after two miscarriages, to die there after giving birth to a stillborn son in November the following year. This sorrow is expressed in Letitia Elizabeth Landon's poem Wikisource-logo.svg Lines on the Mausoleum of the Princess Charlotte, at Claremont., published in Forget Me Not, 1824. Although Leopold retained ownership of Claremont until his death in 1865, he left the house in 1831 when he became the first King of the Belgians.

Mausoleum of Princess Charlotte

Claremont House, ca. 1860

Queen Victoria was a frequent visitor to Claremont—both as a child and later as an adult—when Leopold, her doting uncle, lent her the house. She, in turn, lent the house to the exiled French King and Queen, Louis-Philippe and Marie-Amelie (the parents-in-law of Leopold I of Belgium), after the Revolutions of 1848. The exiled King died at Claremont in 1850.

In 1857, Offenbach and his Bouffes company performed three of his opéras bouffes there for Marie Amelie and her sons during an eight-week tour of England.[7]

In 1870, Queen Victoria commissioned Francis John Williamson to sculpt a marble memorial to Charlotte and Leopold which was erected inside the house.[8][9] (The memorial was subsequently moved to St George's Church, Esher.)[9]

Victoria bought Claremont for her fourth, and youngest, son Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, when he married Princess Helena of Waldeck and Pyrmont in 1882. The Duke and Duchess of Albany had two children—Alice and Charles. Charles, who had been born at Claremont in 1884, inherited the title and position of Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha upon the death of his uncle, Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1900. He moved to the duchy in Germany to fulfill the position, becoming a German citizen, and renouncing his claim in the British succession.

Claremont should have passed to Charles upon his mother's death in 1922, but because he served as a German general in the First World War, the British government disallowed the inheritance. Claremont was accordingly confiscated and sold by the Public Trustee to shipping magnate Sir William Corry, director of the Cunard Line. Two years after Sir William's death, in 1926, it was bought by Eugen Spier, a wealthy German financier.

In 1930, Claremont stood empty and was marked for demolition when it was bought, together with the Belvedere, the stables, and 30 acres (120,000 m2) of parkland, by the Governors of a south London school, later renamed Claremont School and, since 1978, has been known as Claremont Fan Court School.

The National Trust

The National Trust acquired 50 acres (0.20 km2) of the Claremont estate in 1949. In 1975, with a grant from the Slater Foundation, it set about restoring the eighteenth-century landscape garden. Now, the Claremont Landscape Garden displays the successive contributions of the great landscape gardeners who worked on it: Sir John Vanbrugh, Charles Bridgeman, William Kent, and Capability Brown.

In 1996, the school celebrated the National Trust's centenary by opening a feature of the grounds which had not previously been accessible to the garden's visitors: the 281-year-old Belvedere Tower. Wikipedia

Soldiers of the North Carolina National Guard's 230th Brigade Support Battalion off load equipment and tents at their staging area on Forth Bliss to set up for their upcoming missions. The 230th is part of the 30th Armored Brigade's eXportable Combat Training Capability (XCTC) exercise. The exercise is one of the 30th largest exercise in recent history, with over 4,000 Citizen Soldiers from North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, Minnesota, and the country of Moldova will hone their combat skills of “Shoot, Move, Communicate, and Sustain”. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Odaliska Almonte, North Carolina National Guard Public Affairs)

Arriving at Charlecote Park for an afternoon visit to this National Trust property in Warwickshire. The car park and overflow car park is opposite the main gates. But you don't enter via these gates. To the right of here was some wooden gates that was the entrance and exit.

We came via Stratford-upon-Avon.

Charlecote Park (grid reference SP263564) is a grand 16th-century country house, surrounded by its own deer park, on the banks of the River Avon near Wellesbourne, about 4 miles (6 km) east of Stratford-upon-Avon and 5.5 miles (9 km) south of Warwick, Warwickshire, England. It has been administered by the National Trust since 1946 and is open to the public. It is a Grade I listed building.

The Lucy family owned the land since 1247. Charlecote Park was built in 1558 by Sir Thomas Lucy, and Queen Elizabeth I stayed in the room that is now the drawing room. Although the general outline of the Elizabethan house remains, nowadays it is in fact mostly Victorian. Successive generations of the Lucy family had modified Charlecote Park over the centuries, but in 1823, George Hammond Lucy (High Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1831) inherited the house and set about recreating the house in its original style.

Charlecote Park covers 185 acres (75 ha), backing on to the River Avon. William Shakespeare has been alleged to have poached rabbits and deer in the park as a young man and been brought before magistrates as a result.

From 1605 to 1640 the house was organised by Sir Thomas Lucy. He had twelve children with Lady Alice Lucy who ran the house after he died. She was known for her piety and distributing alms to the poor each Christmas. Her eldest three sons inherited the house in turn and it then fell to her grandchild Sir Davenport Lucy.

In the Tudor great hall, the 1680 painting Charlecote Park by Sir Godfrey Kneller, is said to be one of the earliest depictions of a black presence in the West Midlands (excluding Roman legionnaires). The painting, of Captain Thomas Lucy, shows a black boy in the background dressed in a blue livery coat and red stockings and wearing a gleaming, metal collar around his neck. The National Trust's Charlecote brochure describes the boy as a "black page boy". In 1735 a black child called Philip Lucy was baptised at Charlecote.

The lands immediately adjoining the house were further landscaped by Capability Brown in about 1760. This resulted in Charlecote becoming a hostelry destination for notable tourists to Stratford from the late 17th to mid-18th century, including Washington Irving (1818), Sir Walter Scott (1828) and Nathaniel Hawthorn (c 1850).

Charlecote was inherited in 1823 by George Hammond Lucy (d 1845), who married Mary Elizabeth Williams of Bodelwyddan Castle, from who's extensive diaries the current "behind the scenes of Victorian Charlecote" are based upon. GH Lucy's second son Henry inherited the estate from his elder brother in 1847. After the deaths of both Mary Elizabeth and Henry in 1890, the house was rented out by Henry's eldest daughter and heiress, Ada Christina (d 1943). She had married Sir Henry Ramsay-Fairfax, (d 1944), a line of the Fairfax Baronets, who on marriage assumed the name Fairfax-Lucy.

From this point onwards, the family began selling off parts of the outlying estate to fund their extensive lifestyle, and post-World War II in 1946, Sir Montgomerie Fairfax-Lucy, who had inherited the residual estate from his mother Ada, presented Charlecote to the National Trust in-lieu of death duties. Sir Montgomerie was succeeded in 1965 by his brother, Sir Brian, whose wife, Lady Alice, researched the history of Charlecote, and assisted the National Trust with the restoration of the house.

East Entrance Gates

Grade II Listed

East Entrance Gates to Charlecote Park and Flanking Railings and Piers

Listing Text

CHARLECOTE

SP25NE CHARLECOTE PARK

1901-1/2/22 East entrance gates to Charlecote

18/03/97 Park and flanking railings and piers

GV II

Entrance gates and gate piers with flanking railings and

piers. 1861. By John Gibson. For Henry Spencer Lucy. Brick

with ashlar dressings and wrought-iron.

Paired round-headed gates have enriched wrought-iron work

including bands pierced with luces and cross-crosslets from

the Lucy Arms; flanking wrought-iron panels with finials are

attached to brick piers, each with ashlar plinth with roll

moulding, large quoins and entablature; the Lucy crest of

winged boar's head capping pier to left and griffin's head

capping pier to right were restored and reinstated in 1993;

both emerge from coronets on moulded bases with egg-and-dart.

Low flanking ashlar walls curve forward and have roll-moulded

coping and railings with enriched heads, the taller rails with

brackets and larger finials. Brick end piers, each with ashlar

plinth, angle pilasters with fluting and enriched capitals,

and cornice; semi-reclining wild boar. Property of the

National Trust.

(Charlecote Park leaflet on the Deer Park: 1993-).

Listing NGR: SP2623456382

This text is from the original listing, and may not necessarily reflect the current setting of the building.

sculpture - griffin

[1]

Broadway Tower was inspired by the famous Capability Brown and completed in 1799 from designs by the renowned architect James Wyatt. It was built for the Earl of Coventry as a folly to his Springhill Estate and dedicated to his wife Peggy.

Legend has it Broadway Tower was used as a signalling tower between Springhill Estate and Croome Court near Worcester, which can be seen from the roof platform.

Many famous people have had association with Broadway Tower, including Sir Thomas Phillips and the pre-Raphaelite artists William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Rosetti.

Broadway Tower is open to the public allowing you to travel into the past of this important building and visit the viewing platform constituting the highest point in the Cotswolds at 1089 feet or 331.6 metres altitude.

[2]

Broadway Tower is a folly located on Broadway Hill, near the village of Broadway, in the English county of Worcestershire, at the second highest point of the Cotswolds after Cleeve Hill. Broadway Tower's base is 1,024 feet (312 metres) above sea level. The tower itself stands 55 feet (17 metres) high.

The "Saxon" tower was designed by James Wyatt in 1794 to resemble a mock castle, and built for Lady Coventry in 1799. The tower was built on a "beacon" hill, where beacons were lit on special occasions. Lady Coventry wondered if a beacon on this hill could be seen from her house in Worcester - approximately 22 miles (35 km) away - and sponsored the construction of the folly to find out. The beacon could be seen clearly.

Over the years, the tower was home to the printing press of Sir Thomas Phillips, and served as a country retreat for artists including William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones who rented it together in the 1880s.

Today, the tower is a tourist attraction and the centre of a country park with various exhibitions open to the public at a fee as well as a gift shop. The place is on the Cotswold Way and can be reached by following the Cotswold Way from the A44 road at Fish Hill, or by a steep climb out of Broadway village. Near the tower is a memorial to the crew of an A.W.38 Whitley bomber that crashed there during a training mission in June 1943.

Soldiers with the 25th Infantry Division test system solutions in the Capability Development Integration Directorate cyber battle lab at the U.S. Cyber Center of Excellence at Fort Gordon, Ga., Aug. 19. The Hawaii-based Soldiers are taking part in a two-week program to develop cyber capabilities for the 25th. (Photo by Bill Roche)

A walk around Minterne Gardens in Dorset.

The garden walk is about 1 mile in a horseshoe shape.

You can take different paths on the last leg of the walk, we went on the upper path.

Various paths.

Trees

Information below from leaflet from Minterne Gardens:

The Minterne Valley, landscapped in the manner of Capability Brown in the 18th century, has been the home of the Churchill and Digby families for 350 years. The gardens are laid out in a horseshoe below Minterne House, with a chain of small lakes, waterfalls and streams. They contain an important collection of Himalayan Rhodocdendrons and Azaleas, with Spring bulbs, Cherries, Maples and many fine and rare trees; the garden is noted for its Autumn colouring.

Of particular note are the large plants of Magnolia Campbellii which flower in March and April, together with a profusion of spring bulbs. Many flowering cherries were brought from Japan in 1920 and the Pieris Forrestii with their brilliant scarlet shoots, originally came from Wakehurst. A very fine collection of Davidia Involucrata (the pocket handkerchief tree) produce striking bracts in late May and early June, when the streams are lined with primulas, astilbes and other water plants.

DOE officials including Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm broke ground on October 25, 2022, for the Stable Isotope Production and Research Center, a facility that is key to a drive to bring production of enriched stable isotopes back to the United States.The Secretary was accompanied by DOE Under Secretary for Science and Innovation Geraldine Richmond and Office of Science Director Asmeret Asefaw Berhe.

Earlier, Sec. Granholm visited residents and officials with Knoxville’s Community Development Corporation at Western Heights to discuss an energy efficiency project in which ORNL will demonstrate modular overclad panels in eight to 12 single-family attached public housing homes and one commercial building.

Sec. Granholm also met with union workers constructing ORNL’s Translational Research Capability.

From the sand dunes of Essaouira to the peaks of the Atlas Mountains, the all-new Range Rover demonstrates its full breadth of capability in Morocco.

The recently restored folly at Wimpole was built in 1768 to represent gothic ruins and act as a focal point visible from Wimpole Hall.

It stands on a hill overlooking a chain of lakes constructed between 1695 and 1767. These had become partially drained and overgrown but are now restored by the National Trust to their former splendour.

Amongst those who have had a hand in designing the parkland at Wimpole are Capability Brown in 1767 and Humphry Repton between 1801 and 1809.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimpole_Estate

DOE officials including Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm broke ground on October 25, 2022, for the Stable Isotope Production and Research Center, a facility that is key to a drive to bring production of enriched stable isotopes back to the United States.The Secretary was accompanied by DOE Under Secretary for Science and Innovation Geraldine Richmond and Office of Science Director Asmeret Asefaw Berhe.

Earlier, Sec. Granholm visited residents and officials with Knoxville’s Community Development Corporation at Western Heights to discuss an energy efficiency project in which ORNL will demonstrate modular overclad panels in eight to 12 single-family attached public housing homes and one commercial building.

Sec. Granholm also met with union workers constructing ORNL’s Translational Research Capability.

This was taken in the grounds of Milton Abbey which which dates originally from the 10th century and for many hundreds of years was occupied by Benedictine monks from Glastonbury. It became a private stately home after the dissolution of the monastries in 1539 and then became an independant boarding school in the 1950's. The gardens were laid out by Capability Brown.

A contract support representative with the Capability Development Integration Directorate (left) discusses system solutions with Australian (center) and British exchange officers, in the CDID cyber battle lab at the U.S. Cyber Center of Excellence at Fort Gordon, Ga., Aug. 19. (Photo by Bill Roche)

Airmen from the 193rd Special Operations Wing's Aerial Port ensures the equipment being loaded on a C-130J Hercules is loaded safely August 28, 2017. A team of Airmen from the 271st Combat Communications Squadron, 193rd Regional Support Group, 193rd Special Operations Wing, Pennsylvania Air National Guard, is being sent to Texas with their Joint Incident Site Communications Capability trailer to help with Hurricane Harvey relief efforts. The equipment allows civilian first responders to communicate with military assets on the ground. (US Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Matt Schwartz)

DOE officials including Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm broke ground on October 25, 2022, for the Stable Isotope Production and Research Center, a facility that is key to a drive to bring production of enriched stable isotopes back to the United States.The Secretary was accompanied by DOE Under Secretary for Science and Innovation Geraldine Richmond and Office of Science Director Asmeret Asefaw Berhe.

Earlier, Sec. Granholm visited residents and officials with Knoxville’s Community Development Corporation at Western Heights to discuss an energy efficiency project in which ORNL will demonstrate modular overclad panels in eight to 12 single-family attached public housing homes and one commercial building.

Sec. Granholm also met with union workers constructing ORNL’s Translational Research Capability.

DPAC & UK Uncut hold ATOS Closing Ceremony - 31.08.2012

As the Grand Finale to a week-long national campaign of protests against French IT company ATOS Origin and its spinoff ATOS Healthcare which carries out the much-criticised Wirk Capability Assessments on behalf of the DWP, which has seen tens of thousands of severely sick and disabled people declared to be "Fit for Work" and thrown off their disability benefits, several hundred activists from DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts), WinVisible, Disabled Activists' Network, UK Uncut, Right to Work Campaign, Unite the Union, the GMB Union, Occupy London and the National UNion of Students descended on ATOS' London headquarters to carry out what they had billed as the "ATOS Closing Ceremony" - a reference to ATOS' hugely derided sponsorship of the Paralympic Games which is, say the activists, an act of spectatular cynicism by a corporation which is currently contracted by the Cameron government to the tune of £100 million to conduct the much-feared medical assessments without any reference whatsoever to peoples' medical notes of histories.

For two hours the crowd chanted slogans, listened to oral testimonies from people whose lives have been badly affected by ATOS decisions, heard accounts of people driven into such despair by dealing with ATOS that they have comitted suicide, and also heard many accounts of seriously ill people thrown off their benefits by ATOS who have been forced to look for work - having been declared fit for work - and who have died shortly afterwards. The list of people irreperably harmed by ATOS' computer-driven tick-box assessment which cannot possibly take into account the huge range of physical and mental disabilities seems endless.

Following some dogged Freedom of Information requests by two Daily Mirror journalists earlier this year it is now known that an average of 32 sickness or disability benefit claimnants who have been thrown off their benefits by the DWP following an ATOS zero-point rating and placed in the Work-Related Activity Group or who have been put on Jobseeker's Allowance have died shortly afterwards. In many instances relatives of the deceased have claimed that the stress of being treated in such an inhumane way by ATOS contributed to their deaths.

During the protest at Triton Square the 500-strong crowd were entertained by a street theatre performance which saw a fraudulent "ATOS Miracle Cure" booth set up. The "ATOS Reverend" would lay hands on a disabled person and tell them that "by the power of ATOS you are no longer disabled", and sent them through the ATOS Miracle Cure arch, but sadly once through the arch the disabled people realised they had been tricked and they were still, of course, disabled... but worse was to come, as each disabled person was then confronted by an "ATOS Doctor" who stated that because they were now officially no longer disabled and were fit for work they could now be assigned to do their dream jobs, to which end the phoney doctor handed each person a sheet of paper on which was written "100 meter runner", "Bar Tender", "Mountain Climber" and other completely unsuitable job titles.

At around 2:30pm a section of the crowd took off and headed for Westminster where they picketed outside the Department for Work and Pensions, during which an over-agressive action by the police resulted in a disabled man's shoulder being broken as he was knocked off his wheelchair when police shoved protesters into him.

All photos © 2012 Pete Riches

Do not reproduce, alter, re-transmit or reblog my images without my written permission.

Hi-Res, un-watermarked versions of these files are available on application

Media buyers should email me directly or view this story on <a href="http://www.demotix.com/users/pete-riches/profile.

Standard NUJ rates apply.

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From the sand dunes of Essaouira to the peaks of the Atlas Mountains, the all-new Range Rover demonstrates its full breadth of capability in Morocco.

***22 May 2013 500 Views***

View of the Blenheim cascade in poor light, but justified by the amount of water coming over!

The cascade was created by 'Capability Brown' the celebrated English landscape gardner, as part of a comprehensive remodelling of the grounds in the 1770's. Blenheim is regarded by many as his grandest work. The Cascade is at the end of the dam that creates the lake, which took two years to fill after construction. There isn't normally a lot of water as the Glyme, which feeds the lake, is only a small river, however the design of the cascade is such that it maximises the effect of the limited amount of water available.

For all my other Blenheim photos see

www.flickr.com/photos/martin-james/tags/blenheim/

Croome Court is a mid 18th century Neo-Palladian mansion surrounded by an extensive landscaped parkland at Croome D'Abitot, near Pershore in south Worcestershire. The mansion and park were designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown for George Coventry, 6th Earl of Coventry, and was Brown's first landscape design and first major architectural project. Some of the internal rooms of the mansion were designed by Robert Adam.

The mansion house is owned by Croome Heritage Trust, and is leased to the National Trust who operate it, along with the surrounding parkland, as a tourist attraction. The National Trust own the surrounding parkland, which is also open to the public.

Location[edit]

Croome Court is located near to Croome D'Abitot, in Worcestershire,[1] near Pirton, Worcestershire.[2] The wider estate was established on lands that were once part of the royal forest of Horewell.[3] Traces of these older landscapes, such as unimproved commons and ancient woodlands, can be found across the former Croome Estate.[4]

House[edit]

Croome Court South Portico

History[edit]

The foundations and core of Croome Court, including the central chimney stack structure, date back to the early 1640s.[5] Substantial changes to this early house were made by Gilbert Coventry, 4th Earl of Coventry.[6]

In 1751, George Coventry, the 6th Earl, inherited the estate, along with the existing Jacobean house. He commissioned Lancelot "Capability" Brown, with the assistance of Sanderson Miller, to redesign the house and estate.[7][1] It was Brown's "first flight into the realms of architecture" and a "rare example of his architectural work",[8] and it is an important and seminal work.[9] It was built between 1751 and 1752, and it and Hagley Hall are considered to be the finest examples of Neo-Palladian architecture in Worcestershire. Notable Neo-Palladian features incorporated into Croome Court include the plain exterior and the corner towers with pyramidal roofs (a feature first used by Inigo Jones in the design of Wilton House in Wiltshire).[1] Robert Adam worked on the interior of the building from 1760 onwards.[10]

The house has been visited by George III,[2][11] as well as Queen Victoria[7] during summers when she was a child, and George V (then Duke of York).[11]

A jam factory was built by the 9th Earl of Coventry, near to Pershore railway station, in about 1880, to provide a market for Vale of Evesham fruit growers in times of surplus. Although the Croome connection with jam making had ceased, during the First World War, the building was leased by the Croome Estate Trust to the Huddersfield Fruit Preserving Company as a pulping station.[12]

The First World War deeply affected Croome, with many local casualties, although the house was not requisitioned for the war effort. This is possibly because it was the home of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, who needed a residence for his many official engagements.[13]

During the Second World War Croome Court was requisitioned by the Ministry of Works and leased for a year to the Dutch Government as a possible refuge for Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands; to escape the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. However, evidence shows that they stayed two weeks at the most, perhaps because of the noise and fear created by the proximity of Defford Aerodrome. They later emigrated to Canada.[14]

In 1948 the Croome Estate Trust sold the Court, along with 38 acres (15 ha) of land, to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham, and the mansion became St Joseph's Special School, which was run by nuns[15] from 1950[11] until 1979.[15]

The house was listed on 11 August 1952; it is currently Grade I listed.[10]

In 1979 the hall was taken over by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishna movement), who used it as their UK headquarters and a training college[16] called Chaitanya College,[15] run by 25 members of the movement.[16] During their tenure they repainted the Dining Room.[17] In 1984 they had to leave the estate for financial reasons. They held a festival at the hall in 2011.[16]

From 1984 onwards various owners tried to use the property as a training centre; apartments; a restaurant and conference centre; and a hotel and golf course,[15] before once more becoming a private family home,[2][15] with outbuildings converted to private houses.[15]

The house was purchased by the Croome Heritage Trust, a registered charity,[18] in October 2007,[19] and it is now managed by the National Trust as a tourist attraction. It opened to the public in September 2009, at which point six of the rooms had restored, costing £400,000, including the Saloon. It was estimated that another £4 million[2][20] to £4.8 million would be needed to restore the entire building. Fundraising activities for the restoration included a 2011 raffle for a Morgan sports car organised by Lord and Lady Flight. After the restoration is complete, a 999-year lease on the building will be granted to the National Trust.[21] An oral history project to record recollections about Croome was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.[15] As of 2009, the service wing was empty and in need of substantial repair.[22]

Exterior[edit]

The mansion is faced with Bath stone,[7] limestone ashlar, and has both north and south facing fronts. It has a basement and two stories, with three stories in the end pavilions. A slate roof, with pyramid roofs over the corner towers, tops the building, along with three pair-linked chimneys along the axis of the house.[10]

Both fronts have 11 bays, split into three central sets of three each, and one additional bay each side. The north face has a pedimented centre, with two balustraded staircases leading to a Roman Doric doorcase. The south face has a projecting Ionic tetrastyle portico and Venetian windows. It has a broad staircase, with cast stone sphinxes on each side, leading to a south door topped with a cornice on consoles. The wings have modillion cornice and balustrade.[10]

A two-story L-shaped service wing is attached to the east side of the mansion. It is made of red brick and stone, with slate roofs.[10] It was designed by Capability Brown in 1751-2.[22] On the far side of the service wing, a wall connects it to a stable court.[10]

Interior[edit]

The interior of the house was designed partially by Capability Brown, with plasterwork by G. Vassalli, and partially by Robert Adam, with plasterwork by J. Rose Jr. It has a central spine corridor. A stone staircase, with iron balusters, is at the east end.[10]

The entrance hall is on the north side of the building, and has four fluted Doric columns, along with moulded doorcases. To the east of the entrance hall is the dining room, which has a plaster ceiling and cornice, while to the west is a billiard room, featuring fielded panelling, a plaster cornice, and a rococo fireplace. The three rooms were probably decorated around 1758-59 by Capability Brown.[10] The dining room was vibrantly repainted by the Hare Krishnas in the 1970s-80s.[17]

The central room on the south side is a saloon, probably by Brown and Vassalli. It has an elaborate ceiling, with three panels, deep coving, and a cornice, along with two Ionic fireplaces, and Palladian doorcases.[10] George III was entertained by George Coventry, the 6th Earl, in the house's Saloon.[2] A drawing room is to the west of the saloon, and features rococo plasterwork and a marble fireplace.[10]

To the east of the saloon is the Tapestry Room.[10] This was designed in 1763-71, based on a design by Robert Adam, and contained tapestries and furniture covers possibly designed by Jacques Germain Soufflot, and made by Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins.[23] Around 1902 the ninth Earl sold the tapestries and seating to a Parisian dealer. In 1949 the Samuel H. Kress Foundation purchased the ceiling, floor, mantlepiece, chair rails, doors and the door surrounds, which were donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1958. In 1959 the Kress Foundation also helped the Metropolitan Museum acquire the chair and sofa frames, which they recovered using the original tapestry seats.[7][23] A copy of the ceiling was installed in place of the original.[10] As of 2016, the room is displayed as it would have looked after the tapestries had been sold, with a jug and ewer on display as the only original decoration of the room that remains in it. The adjacent library room is used to explain what happened to the tapestry room;[17] the former library was designed by Adam, and was dismantled except for the marble fireplace.[10]

At the west side of the building is a long gallery,[10] which was designed by Robert Adam and installed between 1761 and 1766. It is the best preserved of the original interior (little of the rest has survived in situ).[1] It has an octagonal panelled ceiling, and plaster reliefs of griffins. A half-hexagonal bay faces the garden. The room also contains a marble caryatid fireplace designed by J Wilton.[10] As of 2016, modern sculptures are displayed in empty niches along the Long Gallery

wikipedia

90873334 :Piction ID--D-4004-C Ryan Low Altitude Mission 680 nautical mile range capability 4x5 color neg.tif--c. SDASM

Croome Court is a mid 18th century Neo-Palladian mansion surrounded by an extensive landscaped parkland at Croome D'Abitot, near Pershore in south Worcestershire. The mansion and park were designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown for George Coventry, 6th Earl of Coventry, and was Brown's first landscape design and first major architectural project. Some of the internal rooms of the mansion were designed by Robert Adam.

The mansion house is owned by Croome Heritage Trust, and is leased to the National Trust who operate it, along with the surrounding parkland, as a tourist attraction. The National Trust own the surrounding parkland, which is also open to the public.

While the F-16A had proven a success, its lack of long-range missile and true all-weather capability hampered it, especially in projected combat against the Warsaw Pact over Central Europe. General Dynamics began work on the upgraded F-16C/D version, with the first Block 25 F-16C flying in June 1984 and entering USAF service that September.

Externally, the only ways to tell apart the F-16C from the F-16A is the slightly enlarged base of the tail and a UHF radio antenna at the base of the tail. The intake is also slightly larger, though later marks of the F-16A also have this feature. Internally, however, the F-16C is a significantly different aircraft. The earlier APG-66 radar was replaced by the APG-68 multimode radar used by the F/A-18, which gave the F-16C the same capability to switch between ground-attack and dogfight mode and vastly improved all-weather capability. Cockpit layout was also changed in response to pilots’ requests, with a larger Heads-Up Display and movement of the radar display to eye level rather than between the pilot’s legs on the F-16A. The F-16C would also have the capability to carry the AIM-120 AMRAAM, though it would not be until 1992 that the missile entered service. Other small upgrades were made throughout the design, including the engine.

The Block 25 initial production was superseded by the Block 30 F-16C in 1987, which gave it better navigation systems, and the capability to carry the either the General Electric F110 or the Pratt and Whitney F100 turbofan. The Block 40/42 “Night Falcon” followed in 1988, equipped with LANTIRN night attack pods, followed by the Block 50/52, which was a dedicated Wild Weasel variant. In USAF service, the latter are semi-officially known as F-16CG and F-16CJ variants.

The F-16C had replaced the F-16A in nearly all overseas USAF units by the First Gulf War in 1991, and as a result, the aircraft was among the first deployed to the theater in August 1990. During the war, the F-16C was used mainly in ground attack and strike sorties, due to delays in the AIM-120, but it performed superbly in this role. USAF F-16s finally scored kills in the F-16C, beginning in 1992, when an Iraqi MiG-23 was shot down over the southern no-fly zone; the victory was also the first with the AMRAAM. Four Serbian G-4 Super Galebs were shot down over Bosnia in 1994. F-16Cs had replaced the F-16A entirely in regular and Reserve USAF service by 1997, and further service was seen over Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya by 2012. Subsequent upgrades to USAF F-16Cs with GPS allow them to carry advanced precision weapons such as JSOW and JDAM.

Whatever the variant, the F-16 is today the most prolific combat aircraft in existence, with 28 nations operating the type (17 of which operate F-16Cs). Over 4450 have been built, with more in production; the F-16C is also license-produced by Turkey and South Korea. It also forms the basis for the Mitsubishi F-2 fighter for Japan, though the F-2 is significantly different, with a longer nose and larger wing. Though the USAF projects that the F-16C will be replaced by the F-35 beginning in 2020, it will likely remain in service for a very long time.

Thunderbird 10 is officially assigned to the executive officer of the team--during the 2017 season, Captain Angelina Urbina. The aircraft flies with the team as a spare in case another Thunderbird is "downed" with mechanical issues. At the Wings Over the Falls airshow in Great Falls, MT in July 2017, it was sitting in one of the 120th Airlift Wing's hangars, which provided me and a lot of other photographers an excellent opportunity for pictures, and a fine study of a magnificent aircraft.

The Thunderbirds color scheme is iconic and needs no explanation. The small patch to the left of the flag display is a USAF 70th anniversary sticker. Since Capt. Urbina is from Helena, she got quite the warm reception from the airshow crowd!

DPAC and TUC Disabled Workers block Tottenham Court Road - London 22.05.2013

Activists from DPAC and disabled workers attending the TUC Disabled Workers Conference blocked Tottenham Court Road in Central London for an hour and a half as they protested loudly against punitive government cuts to disability benefits and services which is impacting disastrously - and already fatally - on our most vulnerable citizens.

**From the DPAC website **

On the day of the success of the High Court ruling ruling against the Work Capability Assessment, activists from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and disabled workers attending the Trades Union Congress (TUC) Disabled Workers Conference blocked Tottenham Court Road in an unprecedented act of solidarity.

Mandy Hudson, co-chair of the TUC disabled workers committee said: "Trade unionists would like to send a clear message to this government that trade unions, workers and grass roots disabled groups stand together against the onslaught of vicious cuts rained down upon us by the Condems."

--------------------------------------------------------

All photos © 2013 Pete Riches

Do not reproduce, alter, re-transmit or blog my images without my written permission. I remain at all times the copyright owner of this image.

Hi-Res, un-watermarked versions of these files are available on application solely at my discretion

If you want to use any image found in my Flickr Photostream, please Email me directly.

Media buyers and publications can access this story on Demotix

Standard industry rates apply.

about.me/peteriches

[1]

Broadway Tower was inspired by the famous Capability Brown and completed in 1799 from designs by the renowned architect James Wyatt. It was built for the Earl of Coventry as a folly to his Springhill Estate and dedicated to his wife Peggy.

Legend has it Broadway Tower was used as a signalling tower between Springhill Estate and Croome Court near Worcester, which can be seen from the roof platform.

Many famous people have had association with Broadway Tower, including Sir Thomas Phillips and the pre-Raphaelite artists William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Rosetti.

Broadway Tower is open to the public allowing you to travel into the past of this important building and visit the viewing platform constituting the highest point in the Cotswolds at 1089 feet or 331.6 metres altitude.

[2]

Broadway Tower is a folly located on Broadway Hill, near the village of Broadway, in the English county of Worcestershire, at the second highest point of the Cotswolds after Cleeve Hill. Broadway Tower's base is 1,024 feet (312 metres) above sea level. The tower itself stands 55 feet (17 metres) high.

The "Saxon" tower was designed by James Wyatt in 1794 to resemble a mock castle, and built for Lady Coventry in 1799. The tower was built on a "beacon" hill, where beacons were lit on special occasions. Lady Coventry wondered if a beacon on this hill could be seen from her house in Worcester - approximately 22 miles (35 km) away - and sponsored the construction of the folly to find out. The beacon could be seen clearly.

Over the years, the tower was home to the printing press of Sir Thomas Phillips, and served as a country retreat for artists including William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones who rented it together in the 1880s.

Today, the tower is a tourist attraction and the centre of a country park with various exhibitions open to the public at a fee as well as a gift shop. The place is on the Cotswold Way and can be reached by following the Cotswold Way from the A44 road at Fish Hill, or by a steep climb out of Broadway village. Near the tower is a memorial to the crew of an A.W.38 Whitley bomber that crashed there during a training mission in June 1943.

While the F-16A had proven a success, its lack of long-range missile and true all-weather capability hampered it, especially in projected combat against the Warsaw Pact over Central Europe. General Dynamics began work on the upgraded F-16C/D version, with the first Block 25 F-16C flying in June 1984 and entering USAF service that September.

Externally, the only ways to tell apart the F-16C from the F-16A is the slightly enlarged base of the tail and a UHF radio antenna at the base of the tail. The intake is also slightly larger, though later marks of the F-16A also have this feature. Internally, however, the F-16C is a significantly different aircraft. The earlier APG-66 radar was replaced by the APG-68 multimode radar used by the F/A-18, which gave the F-16C the same capability to switch between ground-attack and dogfight mode and vastly improved all-weather capability. Cockpit layout was also changed in response to pilots’ requests, with a larger Heads-Up Display and movement of the radar display to eye level rather than between the pilot’s legs on the F-16A. The F-16C would also have the capability to carry the AIM-120 AMRAAM, though it would not be until 1992 that the missile entered service. Other small upgrades were made throughout the design, including the engine.

The Block 25 initial production was superseded by the Block 30 F-16C in 1987, which gave it better navigation systems, and the capability to carry the either the General Electric F110 or the Pratt and Whitney F100 turbofan. The Block 40/42 “Night Falcon” followed in 1988, equipped with LANTIRN night attack pods, followed by the Block 50/52, which was a dedicated Wild Weasel variant. In USAF service, the latter are semi-officially known as F-16CG and F-16CJ variants.

The F-16C had replaced the F-16A in nearly all overseas USAF units by the First Gulf War in 1991, and as a result, the aircraft was among the first deployed to the theater in August 1990. During the war, the F-16C was used mainly in ground attack and strike sorties, due to delays in the AIM-120, but it performed superbly in this role. USAF F-16s finally scored kills in the F-16C, beginning in 1992, when an Iraqi MiG-23 was shot down over the southern no-fly zone; the victory was also the first with the AMRAAM. Four Serbian G-4 Super Galebs were shot down over Bosnia in 1994. F-16Cs had replaced the F-16A entirely in regular and Reserve USAF service by 1997, and further service was seen over Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya by 2012. Subsequent upgrades to USAF F-16Cs with GPS allow them to carry advanced precision weapons such as JSOW and JDAM.

Whatever the variant, the F-16 is today the most prolific combat aircraft in existence, with 28 nations operating the type (17 of which operate F-16Cs). Over 4450 have been built, with more in production; the F-16C is also license-produced by Turkey and South Korea. It also forms the basis for the Mitsubishi F-2 fighter for Japan, though the F-2 is significantly different, with a longer nose and larger wing. Though the USAF projects that the F-16C will be replaced by the F-35 beginning in 2020, it will likely remain in service for a very long time.

The crowd at the Wings Over the Falls airshow in July 2017 were able to get fairly close to where the Thunderbirds taxied out. Here Thunderbird 5, the lead solo aircraft, heads out to the runway, with a little wave to the crowd. The inverted 5 is a Thunderbirds tradition, since the lead solo spends a lot of time upside down during the show. Thunderbird 5 was Major Alex Turner for the 2017 season.

Croome Court is a mid 18th century Neo-Palladian mansion surrounded by an extensive landscaped parkland at Croome D'Abitot, near Pershore in south Worcestershire. The mansion and park were designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown for George Coventry, 6th Earl of Coventry, and was Brown's first landscape design and first major architectural project. Some of the internal rooms of the mansion were designed by Robert Adam.

The mansion house is owned by Croome Heritage Trust, and is leased to the National Trust who operate it, along with the surrounding parkland, as a tourist attraction. The National Trust own the surrounding parkland, which is also open to the public.

Location[edit]

Croome Court is located near to Croome D'Abitot, in Worcestershire,[1] near Pirton, Worcestershire.[2] The wider estate was established on lands that were once part of the royal forest of Horewell.[3] Traces of these older landscapes, such as unimproved commons and ancient woodlands, can be found across the former Croome Estate.[4]

House[edit]

Croome Court South Portico

History[edit]

The foundations and core of Croome Court, including the central chimney stack structure, date back to the early 1640s.[5] Substantial changes to this early house were made by Gilbert Coventry, 4th Earl of Coventry.[6]

In 1751, George Coventry, the 6th Earl, inherited the estate, along with the existing Jacobean house. He commissioned Lancelot "Capability" Brown, with the assistance of Sanderson Miller, to redesign the house and estate.[7][1] It was Brown's "first flight into the realms of architecture" and a "rare example of his architectural work",[8] and it is an important and seminal work.[9] It was built between 1751 and 1752, and it and Hagley Hall are considered to be the finest examples of Neo-Palladian architecture in Worcestershire. Notable Neo-Palladian features incorporated into Croome Court include the plain exterior and the corner towers with pyramidal roofs (a feature first used by Inigo Jones in the design of Wilton House in Wiltshire).[1] Robert Adam worked on the interior of the building from 1760 onwards.[10]

The house has been visited by George III,[2][11] as well as Queen Victoria[7] during summers when she was a child, and George V (then Duke of York).[11]

A jam factory was built by the 9th Earl of Coventry, near to Pershore railway station, in about 1880, to provide a market for Vale of Evesham fruit growers in times of surplus. Although the Croome connection with jam making had ceased, during the First World War, the building was leased by the Croome Estate Trust to the Huddersfield Fruit Preserving Company as a pulping station.[12]

The First World War deeply affected Croome, with many local casualties, although the house was not requisitioned for the war effort. This is possibly because it was the home of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, who needed a residence for his many official engagements.[13]

During the Second World War Croome Court was requisitioned by the Ministry of Works and leased for a year to the Dutch Government as a possible refuge for Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands; to escape the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. However, evidence shows that they stayed two weeks at the most, perhaps because of the noise and fear created by the proximity of Defford Aerodrome. They later emigrated to Canada.[14]

In 1948 the Croome Estate Trust sold the Court, along with 38 acres (15 ha) of land, to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham, and the mansion became St Joseph's Special School, which was run by nuns[15] from 1950[11] until 1979.[15]

The house was listed on 11 August 1952; it is currently Grade I listed.[10]

In 1979 the hall was taken over by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishna movement), who used it as their UK headquarters and a training college[16] called Chaitanya College,[15] run by 25 members of the movement.[16] During their tenure they repainted the Dining Room.[17] In 1984 they had to leave the estate for financial reasons. They held a festival at the hall in 2011.[16]

From 1984 onwards various owners tried to use the property as a training centre; apartments; a restaurant and conference centre; and a hotel and golf course,[15] before once more becoming a private family home,[2][15] with outbuildings converted to private houses.[15]

The house was purchased by the Croome Heritage Trust, a registered charity,[18] in October 2007,[19] and it is now managed by the National Trust as a tourist attraction. It opened to the public in September 2009, at which point six of the rooms had restored, costing £400,000, including the Saloon. It was estimated that another £4 million[2][20] to £4.8 million would be needed to restore the entire building. Fundraising activities for the restoration included a 2011 raffle for a Morgan sports car organised by Lord and Lady Flight. After the restoration is complete, a 999-year lease on the building will be granted to the National Trust.[21] An oral history project to record recollections about Croome was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.[15] As of 2009, the service wing was empty and in need of substantial repair.[22]

Exterior[edit]

The mansion is faced with Bath stone,[7] limestone ashlar, and has both north and south facing fronts. It has a basement and two stories, with three stories in the end pavilions. A slate roof, with pyramid roofs over the corner towers, tops the building, along with three pair-linked chimneys along the axis of the house.[10]

Both fronts have 11 bays, split into three central sets of three each, and one additional bay each side. The north face has a pedimented centre, with two balustraded staircases leading to a Roman Doric doorcase. The south face has a projecting Ionic tetrastyle portico and Venetian windows. It has a broad staircase, with cast stone sphinxes on each side, leading to a south door topped with a cornice on consoles. The wings have modillion cornice and balustrade.[10]

A two-story L-shaped service wing is attached to the east side of the mansion. It is made of red brick and stone, with slate roofs.[10] It was designed by Capability Brown in 1751-2.[22] On the far side of the service wing, a wall connects it to a stable court.[10]

Interior[edit]

The interior of the house was designed partially by Capability Brown, with plasterwork by G. Vassalli, and partially by Robert Adam, with plasterwork by J. Rose Jr. It has a central spine corridor. A stone staircase, with iron balusters, is at the east end.[10]

The entrance hall is on the north side of the building, and has four fluted Doric columns, along with moulded doorcases. To the east of the entrance hall is the dining room, which has a plaster ceiling and cornice, while to the west is a billiard room, featuring fielded panelling, a plaster cornice, and a rococo fireplace. The three rooms were probably decorated around 1758-59 by Capability Brown.[10] The dining room was vibrantly repainted by the Hare Krishnas in the 1970s-80s.[17]

The central room on the south side is a saloon, probably by Brown and Vassalli. It has an elaborate ceiling, with three panels, deep coving, and a cornice, along with two Ionic fireplaces, and Palladian doorcases.[10] George III was entertained by George Coventry, the 6th Earl, in the house's Saloon.[2] A drawing room is to the west of the saloon, and features rococo plasterwork and a marble fireplace.[10]

To the east of the saloon is the Tapestry Room.[10] This was designed in 1763-71, based on a design by Robert Adam, and contained tapestries and furniture covers possibly designed by Jacques Germain Soufflot, and made by Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins.[23] Around 1902 the ninth Earl sold the tapestries and seating to a Parisian dealer. In 1949 the Samuel H. Kress Foundation purchased the ceiling, floor, mantlepiece, chair rails, doors and the door surrounds, which were donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1958. In 1959 the Kress Foundation also helped the Metropolitan Museum acquire the chair and sofa frames, which they recovered using the original tapestry seats.[7][23] A copy of the ceiling was installed in place of the original.[10] As of 2016, the room is displayed as it would have looked after the tapestries had been sold, with a jug and ewer on display as the only original decoration of the room that remains in it. The adjacent library room is used to explain what happened to the tapestry room;[17] the former library was designed by Adam, and was dismantled except for the marble fireplace.[10]

At the west side of the building is a long gallery,[10] which was designed by Robert Adam and installed between 1761 and 1766. It is the best preserved of the original interior (little of the rest has survived in situ).[1] It has an octagonal panelled ceiling, and plaster reliefs of griffins. A half-hexagonal bay faces the garden. The room also contains a marble caryatid fireplace designed by J Wilton.[10] As of 2016, modern sculptures are displayed in empty niches along the Long Gallery

wikipedia

From the sand dunes of Essaouira to the peaks of the Atlas Mountains, the all-new Range Rover demonstrates its full breadth of capability in Morocco.

From the sand dunes of Essaouira to the peaks of the Atlas Mountains, the all-new Range Rover demonstrates its full breadth of capability in Morocco.

DPAC and TUC Disabled Workers block Tottenham Court Road - London 22.05.2013

Activists from DPAC and disabled workers attending the TUC Disabled Workers Conference blocked Tottenham Court Road in Central London for an hour and a half as they protested loudly against punitive government cuts to disability benefits and services which is impacting disastrously - and already fatally - on our most vulnerable citizens.

**From the DPAC website **

On the day of the success of the High Court ruling ruling against the Work Capability Assessment, activists from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and disabled workers attending the Trades Union Congress (TUC) Disabled Workers Conference blocked Tottenham Court Road in an unprecedented act of solidarity.

Mandy Hudson, co-chair of the TUC disabled workers committee said: "Trade unionists would like to send a clear message to this government that trade unions, workers and grass roots disabled groups stand together against the onslaught of vicious cuts rained down upon us by the Condems."

--------------------------------------------------------

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DOE officials including Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm broke ground on October 25, 2022, for the Stable Isotope Production and Research Center, a facility that is key to a drive to bring production of enriched stable isotopes back to the United States.The Secretary was accompanied by DOE Under Secretary for Science and Innovation Geraldine Richmond and Office of Science Director Asmeret Asefaw Berhe.

Earlier, Sec. Granholm visited residents and officials with Knoxville’s Community Development Corporation at Western Heights to discuss an energy efficiency project in which ORNL will demonstrate modular overclad panels in eight to 12 single-family attached public housing homes and one commercial building.

Sec. Granholm also met with union workers constructing ORNL’s Translational Research Capability.

The existence of the estate in its current form goes back over 230 years to its creator Thomas Harley. But since then only two other families have owned the property; the Rodneys and the Cawleys.

Berrington was essentially created by one man, Thomas Harley, who bought the estate around 1775. He made his fortune as a banker and government contractor in London, but had long family links with Herefordshire, to which, in his mid-40s, he was keen to retire from the hurly-burly of City politics.

Harley commissioned ‘Capability’ Brown to lay out the park, which has spectacular views west towards Wales and the Black Mountains. Around 1778 he also called in Brown’s son-in-law, Henry Holland, to design him a new house in the latest French influenced Neo-classical style, using the finest London craftsman.

Harley had no male heir, but was delighted when in 1781 his daughter Anne married the son of Admiral Lord Rodney, a great naval commander.

On Harley’s death in 1804, Berrington passed to the Rodney family, who lived there for the next 95 years. Unfortunately George, the 7th Lord Rodney lost the family wealth in the late 19th century; first selling off furniture and paintings. He was finally forced to sell the house in 1901.

The house was purchased in 1901 by Frederick Cawley MP (later to become Lord Cawley), a wealthy Lancashire cotton finisher who bought a new lease of life to Berrington. He redecorated the house with considerable sympathy and many of his schemes still survive. He replaced ugly Victorian fire grates with more appropriate Georgian models but otherwise did little to disturb Holland’s beautiful original design.

It was in this cherished state that the house came to the National Trust in 1957 in part payment for death duties for the second Lord Cawley.

www.nationaltrust.org.uk/berrington-hall/

DOE officials including Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm broke ground on October 25, 2022, for the Stable Isotope Production and Research Center, a facility that is key to a drive to bring production of enriched stable isotopes back to the United States.The Secretary was accompanied by DOE Under Secretary for Science and Innovation Geraldine Richmond and Office of Science Director Asmeret Asefaw Berhe.

Earlier, Sec. Granholm visited residents and officials with Knoxville’s Community Development Corporation at Western Heights to discuss an energy efficiency project in which ORNL will demonstrate modular overclad panels in eight to 12 single-family attached public housing homes and one commercial building.

Sec. Granholm also met with union workers constructing ORNL’s Translational Research Capability.

A pre-booked visit to Westbury Court Garden in Gloucestershire. Was a rainy couple of hours. The garden was quite small, but the rain eventually stopped.

Westbury Court Garden is a Dutch water garden in Westbury-on-Severn, Gloucestershire, England, 9 miles (14 km) southwest of Gloucester.

It was laid out in 1696–1705, a rare survival not to have been replaced in the 18th century by a naturalistic garden landscape as popularised by Capability Brown. It is situated facing the high street of the rural village, extending on low-lying water meadows adjacent to the River Severn; the flat watery ground makes the site well suited to a Dutch-style garden, of which Westbury is the outstanding survival in Britain.

The two-storey Dutch style red-brick pavilion is close to the entrance. It was restored by the National Trust in the 1970s. Not listed.

Due to the pandemic, the upper floors were not open to the public.

In front is a Canal.

170808-N-KB401-390 ATLANTIC OCEAN (Aug. 8, 2017) Left to right, guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea (CG 58), Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08), guided-missile destroyer USS Donald Cook (DDG 75), Royal Navy Duke-class frigate HMS Westminster (F 237), Royal Norwegian Navy frigate Helge Ingstad (F 313), the Royal Navy Duke-class frigate Iron Duke (F 234) sail in formation during Saxon Warrior 2017, Aug. 8. Saxon Warrior is a United States and United Kingdom co-hosted carrier strike group exercise that demonstrates interoperability and capability to respond to crises and deter potential threats. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Michael B. Zingaro/Released)

While the F-16A had proven a success, its lack of long-range missile and true all-weather capability hampered it, especially in projected combat against the Warsaw Pact over Central Europe. General Dynamics began work on the upgraded F-16C/D version, with the first Block 25 F-16C flying in June 1984 and entering USAF service that September.

Externally, the only ways to tell apart the F-16C from the F-16A is the slightly enlarged base of the tail and a UHF radio antenna at the base of the tail. The intake is also slightly larger, though later marks of the F-16A also have this feature. Internally, however, the F-16C is a significantly different aircraft. The earlier APG-66 radar was replaced by the APG-68 multimode radar used by the F/A-18, which gave the F-16C the same capability to switch between ground-attack and dogfight mode and vastly improved all-weather capability. Cockpit layout was also changed in response to pilots’ requests, with a larger Heads-Up Display and movement of the radar display to eye level rather than between the pilot’s legs on the F-16A. The F-16C would also have the capability to carry the AIM-120 AMRAAM, though it would not be until 1992 that the missile entered service. Other small upgrades were made throughout the design, including the engine.

The Block 25 initial production was superseded by the Block 30 F-16C in 1987, which gave it better navigation systems, and the capability to carry the either the General Electric F110 or the Pratt and Whitney F100 turbofan. The Block 40/42 “Night Falcon” followed in 1988, equipped with LANTIRN night attack pods, followed by the Block 50/52, which was a dedicated Wild Weasel variant. In USAF service, the latter are semi-officially known as F-16CG and F-16CJ variants.

The F-16C had replaced the F-16A in nearly all overseas USAF units by the First Gulf War in 1991, and as a result, the aircraft was among the first deployed to the theater in August 1990. During the war, the F-16C was used mainly in ground attack and strike sorties, due to delays in the AIM-120, but it performed superbly in this role. USAF F-16s finally scored kills in the F-16C, beginning in 1992, when an Iraqi MiG-23 was shot down over the southern no-fly zone; the victory was also the first with the AMRAAM. Four Serbian G-4 Super Galebs were shot down over Bosnia in 1994. F-16Cs had replaced the F-16A entirely in regular and Reserve USAF service by 1997, and further service was seen over Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya by 2012. Subsequent upgrades to USAF F-16Cs with GPS allow them to carry advanced precision weapons such as JSOW and JDAM.

Whatever the variant, the F-16 is today the most prolific combat aircraft in existence, with 28 nations operating the type (17 of which operate F-16Cs). Over 4450 have been built, with more in production; the F-16C is also license-produced by Turkey and South Korea. It also forms the basis for the Mitsubishi F-2 fighter for Japan, though the F-2 is significantly different, with a longer nose and larger wing. Though the USAF projects that the F-16C will be replaced by the F-35 beginning in 2020, it will likely remain in service for a very long time.

Here the Thunderbirds make a slow pass for the camera--hence why I was able to get the shot despite owning a fairly cheap camera! The team is in the diamond formation, which is used by the Thunderbirds as their "default" formation. This is a slightly expanded diamond; the team is often no more than three feet from each other in the diamond. This picture was taken at the Wings Over the Falls airshow in Great Falls, MT in July 2017.

The 501st Military Intelligence Brigade demonstrated its capabilities during a Korean-language only capability exercise for 160 intelligence professionals from the Republic of Korea military here Dec. 10.

For the Dragon Brigade, this CAPEX was unique because it was conducted in Hangul with the help of Korean linguists from the brigade’s four battalions: 3rd MI Battalion (Aerial Exploitation), 524th MI Battalion (Counter Intelligence and Human Intelligence), 532th MI Battalion (Operations and All-Source) and the 719th MI Battalion (Signals Intelligence).

The senior representatives at the CAPEX included ROK Air Force Brig. Gen. Park, Kyung-jong, 3rd Brigade Commander, Defense Intelligence Command and ROK Army Brig. Gen. Son, Ki-hwa, the Director of Intelligence Operations for the ROK Joint Chiefs of Staff J-2.

Also participating were intelligence professionals from the Korea Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Command, Defense Security Command and the ROK Intelligence School.

The Brigade Liaison Team gave the ROK intelligence professionals a welcome brief that explained the different missions the brigade executes on a daily basis in defense of the Republic of Korea.

Attendees were then broken into three groups and visited the equipment and capabilities static displays at the 3rd Military Intelligence Battalion flight line, the Ground Component Command-Combined Analysis and Control Center and the Field Station Korea.

U.S. Army photos by Sgt. Shawn Cassatt

For more information on U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys and living and working in Korea visit: USAG-Humphreys' official web site or check out our online videos.

DPAC & UK Uncut hold ATOS Closing Ceremony - 31.08.2012

As the Grand Finale to a week-long national campaign of protests against French IT company ATOS Origin and its spinoff ATOS Healthcare which carries out the much-criticised Wirk Capability Assessments on behalf of the DWP, which has seen tens of thousands of severely sick and disabled people declared to be "Fit for Work" and thrown off their disability benefits, several hundred activists from DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts), WinVisible, Disabled Activists' Network, UK Uncut, Right to Work Campaign, Unite the Union, the GMB Union, Occupy London and the National UNion of Students descended on ATOS' London headquarters to carry out what they had billed as the "ATOS Closing Ceremony" - a reference to ATOS' hugely derided sponsorship of the Paralympic Games which is, say the activists, an act of spectatular cynicism by a corporation which is currently contracted by the Cameron government to the tune of £100 million to conduct the much-feared medical assessments without any reference whatsoever to peoples' medical notes of histories.

For two hours the crowd chanted slogans, listened to oral testimonies from people whose lives have been badly affected by ATOS decisions, heard accounts of people driven into such despair by dealing with ATOS that they have comitted suicide, and also heard many accounts of seriously ill people thrown off their benefits by ATOS who have been forced to look for work - having been declared fit for work - and who have died shortly afterwards. The list of people irreperably harmed by ATOS' computer-driven tick-box assessment which cannot possibly take into account the huge range of physical and mental disabilities seems endless.

Following some dogged Freedom of Information requests by two Daily Mirror journalists earlier this year it is now known that an average of 32 sickness or disability benefit claimnants who have been thrown off their benefits by the DWP following an ATOS zero-point rating and placed in the Work-Related Activity Group or who have been put on Jobseeker's Allowance have died shortly afterwards. In many instances relatives of the deceased have claimed that the stress of being treated in such an inhumane way by ATOS contributed to their deaths.

During the protest at Triton Square the 500-strong crowd were entertained by a street theatre performance which saw a fraudulent "ATOS Miracle Cure" booth set up. The "ATOS Reverend" would lay hands on a disabled person and tell them that "by the power of ATOS you are no longer disabled", and sent them through the ATOS Miracle Cure arch, but sadly once through the arch the disabled people realised they had been tricked and they were still, of course, disabled... but worse was to come, as each disabled person was then confronted by an "ATOS Doctor" who stated that because they were now officially no longer disabled and were fit for work they could now be assigned to do their dream jobs, to which end the phoney doctor handed each person a sheet of paper on which was written "100 meter runner", "Bar Tender", "Mountain Climber" and other completely unsuitable job titles.

At around 2:30pm a section of the crowd took off and headed for Westminster where they picketed outside the Department for Work and Pensions, during which an over-agressive action by the police resulted in a disabled man's shoulder being broken as he was knocked off his wheelchair when police shoved protesters into him.

All photos © 2012 Pete Riches

Do not reproduce, alter, re-transmit or reblog my images without my written permission.

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While the F-16A had proven a success, its lack of long-range missile and true all-weather capability hampered it, especially in projected combat against the Warsaw Pact over Central Europe. General Dynamics began work on the upgraded F-16C/D version, with the first Block 25 F-16C flying in June 1984 and entering USAF service that September.

Externally, the only ways to tell apart the F-16C from the F-16A is the slightly enlarged base of the tail and a UHF radio antenna at the base of the tail. The intake is also slightly larger, though later marks of the F-16A also have this feature. Internally, however, the F-16C is a significantly different aircraft. The earlier APG-66 radar was replaced by the APG-68 multimode radar used by the F/A-18, which gave the F-16C the same capability to switch between ground-attack and dogfight mode and vastly improved all-weather capability. Cockpit layout was also changed in response to pilots’ requests, with a larger Heads-Up Display and movement of the radar display to eye level rather than between the pilot’s legs on the F-16A. The F-16C would also have the capability to carry the AIM-120 AMRAAM, though it would not be until 1992 that the missile entered service. Other small upgrades were made throughout the design, including the engine.

The Block 25 initial production was superseded by the Block 30 F-16C in 1987, which gave it better navigation systems, and the capability to carry the either the General Electric F110 or the Pratt and Whitney F100 turbofan. The Block 40/42 “Night Falcon” followed in 1988, equipped with LANTIRN night attack pods, followed by the Block 50/52, which was a dedicated Wild Weasel variant. In USAF service, the latter are semi-officially known as F-16CG and F-16CJ variants.

The F-16C had replaced the F-16A in nearly all overseas USAF units by the First Gulf War in 1991, and as a result, the aircraft was among the first deployed to the theater in August 1990. During the war, the F-16C was used mainly in ground attack and strike sorties, due to delays in the AIM-120, but it performed superbly in this role. USAF F-16s finally scored kills in the F-16C, beginning in 1992, when an Iraqi MiG-23 was shot down over the southern no-fly zone; the victory was also the first with the AMRAAM. Four Serbian G-4 Super Galebs were shot down over Bosnia in 1994. F-16Cs had replaced the F-16A entirely in regular and Reserve USAF service by 1997, and further service was seen over Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya by 2012. Subsequent upgrades to USAF F-16Cs with GPS allow them to carry advanced precision weapons such as JSOW and JDAM.

Whatever the variant, the F-16 is today the most prolific combat aircraft in existence, with 28 nations operating the type (17 of which operate F-16Cs). Over 4450 have been built, with more in production; the F-16C is also license-produced by Turkey and South Korea. It also forms the basis for the Mitsubishi F-2 fighter for Japan, though the F-2 is significantly different, with a longer nose and larger wing. Though the USAF projects that the F-16C will be replaced by the F-35 beginning in 2020, it will likely remain in service for a very long time.

The Thunderbirds were parked at show center, which made it easy to get some good pictures of the whole team. This was several hours before the Thunderbirds' performance, so there was very little activity around the aircraft at the time. The F-16D on the right is normally used to fly the narrator and the operations officer for the squadron, but it can serve as a spare aircraft if needed. After the pilots manned their aircraft, Thunderbird 4 experienced engine trouble and was "downed" by the crew chief. They towed the two-seater out, the pilot of Thunderbird 4 switched planes, and he flew the two-seater for the entire show--even though it still had the centerline belly tank attached.

I may be bad luck for the Thunderbirds: the last time I saw them, in 2005, they also had engine trouble, that time with Thunderbird 3, and flew the show with one aircraft missing.

DOE officials including Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm broke ground on October 25, 2022, for the Stable Isotope Production and Research Center, a facility that is key to a drive to bring production of enriched stable isotopes back to the United States.The Secretary was accompanied by DOE Under Secretary for Science and Innovation Geraldine Richmond and Office of Science Director Asmeret Asefaw Berhe.

Earlier, Sec. Granholm visited residents and officials with Knoxville’s Community Development Corporation at Western Heights to discuss an energy efficiency project in which ORNL will demonstrate modular overclad panels in eight to 12 single-family attached public housing homes and one commercial building.

Sec. Granholm also met with union workers constructing ORNL’s Translational Research Capability.

Commemorative Statue of Lancelot "Capability" Brown, English Landscape Creator (1716-1783) and a Resident of Hammersmith...With Harrods Furniture Depository looking South across The River Thames at Barnes

West London. England, U.K.

Disabled activists hold '10,000 Cuts and Counting' memorial outside Parliament - London 27.09.2013

Disability rights activists from DPAC and WOW Petition held a memorial for the more than 10,000 disabled and sick people who died shortly after or during their Work Capability Assessments at the hands of controversial French IT company ATOS, at the behest of the Department for Work and Pensions. The event was led by the Dean of St Pauls Cathedral, Dr David Ison, and human rights campaigner Mohammed Ansar, and took place in front of a carpet of white flowers laid on Parliament Square to represent the tragic victims of the Coalition government's ideological brutality and unutterable cruelty towards the sick, the disabled and the dying.

The various speakers included Michael Meacher MP, John McDonnell MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Ellen Clifford (Inclusion London), Paula Peters (DPAC), Clare Glasman (WinVisible), Ian Jones (WOW Petition), Wayne Beckman (WOW Petition), Ian Chamberlain (WOW Petition), Dr Louise Irvine, Michael Horne and Dickie Upton.

All photos © Pete Riches

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From the sand dunes of Essaouira to the peaks of the Atlas Mountains, the all-new Range Rover demonstrates its full breadth of capability in Morocco.

A Joint Capability Demonstration is held during Exercise TRIDENT JUNCTURE 2018 in Trondheim, Norway, on October 30, 2018.

Trident Juncture 2018 is NATO’s largest exercise in many years, bringing together around 50,000 personnel from all 29 Allies, plus partners Finland and Sweden. Around 65 vessels, 250 aircraft and 10,000 vehicles will participate.

Photo: Sgt Marc-André Gaudreault, JFC Brunssum Imagery

[1]

Broadway Tower was inspired by the famous Capability Brown and completed in 1799 from designs by the renowned architect James Wyatt. It was built for the Earl of Coventry as a folly to his Springhill Estate and dedicated to his wife Peggy.

Legend has it Broadway Tower was used as a signalling tower between Springhill Estate and Croome Court near Worcester, which can be seen from the roof platform.

Many famous people have had association with Broadway Tower, including Sir Thomas Phillips and the pre-Raphaelite artists William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Rosetti.

Broadway Tower is open to the public allowing you to travel into the past of this important building and visit the viewing platform constituting the highest point in the Cotswolds at 1089 feet or 331.6 metres altitude.

[2]

Broadway Tower is a folly located on Broadway Hill, near the village of Broadway, in the English county of Worcestershire, at the second highest point of the Cotswolds after Cleeve Hill. Broadway Tower's base is 1,024 feet (312 metres) above sea level. The tower itself stands 55 feet (17 metres) high.

The "Saxon" tower was designed by James Wyatt in 1794 to resemble a mock castle, and built for Lady Coventry in 1799. The tower was built on a "beacon" hill, where beacons were lit on special occasions. Lady Coventry wondered if a beacon on this hill could be seen from her house in Worcester - approximately 22 miles (35 km) away - and sponsored the construction of the folly to find out. The beacon could be seen clearly.

Over the years, the tower was home to the printing press of Sir Thomas Phillips, and served as a country retreat for artists including William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones who rented it together in the 1880s.

Today, the tower is a tourist attraction and the centre of a country park with various exhibitions open to the public at a fee as well as a gift shop. The place is on the Cotswold Way and can be reached by following the Cotswold Way from the A44 road at Fish Hill, or by a steep climb out of Broadway village. Near the tower is a memorial to the crew of an A.W.38 Whitley bomber that crashed there during a training mission in June 1943.