Real Aero Company Summer Fly/Drive-In July 21/22nd '18

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I was intending to take "Jessie the Jeep" to Breighton, but this is the first time I've had to cancel due to good weather! Yes, that's right, cancelled due to good weather!! About a week before the event, an email came around advising there would be no cooking allowed on site due to the extremely dry weather creating a fire risk on the airfield. Not being able to stay on site created complications in taking the Jeep, without clocking up un-necessary mileage, so in the end we decided to leave the Jeep at home. We'd go in the normal car on Saturday morning, stay at my dad's house only 35 minutes away, and go back on Sunday.

For the last few months, there has been a photo competition, for any picture taken at Breighton. All the entries were in the conservatory on Saturday, with the winner being announced at the Saturday evening hangar party. They read out the names of the participants but missed my name out or the list, until they announced the winner! Some of the entries, my trophy and winning picture are shown below. On Sunday, they were all moved to hangar 2 for display.

The Real Aeroplane Company has an impressive collection of aircraft, but they were also joined by many visitors, flying both modern and vintage aircraft. In fact, there were so many aircraft on the flight line, that they ended up double parked at the West end of the airfield, with others still in the hangars! The largest visitor was the twin engined Beechcraft C-45 Expeditor, seen in the second picture below. The rest of the aircraft in this post are just part of the Real Aeroplane Collection.

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Emeraude G-ARRS was a visitor to the airfield.

The dH 60 Gipsy Moth is a fairly new resident. Lots more vintage aircraft should be based there soon as they are nearly finished building several more hangars.

Another nice visitor was this Fox Moth that was busy all weekend.

The Bucker Bestmann/Gomhouria of Tony Brier is another Breighton based aircraft.

Here's a few of the vehicles on show, including Taff's racing car which performed a number of high speed runs along the taxiway.

Another nice twin that flew in was a Miles Gemini, joining the resident Miles Messenger and Magister.

Here's the Gemini again, then Piper Vagabond, Piper Apache and the de Havilland dH60 Gipsy Moth.

It was interesting to watch the folded wings being opened out to prepare the aircraft for flight. Four spring loaded pins, one to each wing leading edge hold the wings open. When folded, there's an extendable strut to support the wing leading edges at the inboard end.

Despite a partly cloudy day, it had been very warm, and the sun broke through in time for the evening hangar party. While we didn't have the usual spectacular sun set, there were still some interesting cloud formations and lighting. The hangar party had a live band as well as the resident comedian Brian, doing some stand up and my eight year old daughter danced the night away for almost four and a half hours straight!

Day two was unbearably hot, and other than a couple of trips along the flight line for pictures, I spent most of the day in hangar 2 where there was some solid shade. There were several Austers that flew in to the event and with those resident at the airfield, they numbered around eight. The good weather allowed plenty of flying on both days. Not having a tent or Jeep, we were able to make a quick getaway at 5pm. There's a classic car meet there in September, so I may take the Jeep down for that instead.

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Nice shots.