The Breighton Radial Fly-In was my first camping trip of 2018. Unusually for a bank holiday, the forecast was for hot and dry, and I made the three hour trip down to Breighton on Saturday 5th, in shirt sleeves with the Jeep doors off. I set up camp near one of the old wartime technical site huts. There were a number of people already flying, enjoying the beautiful weather. As the evening drew on, and the sun went down, I took the opportunity to get some pictures of the Jeep around the airfield.

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On Sunday morning, I helped the guys get the collection aircraft out onto the flight line. Here's four of the Real Aero collection, two Bucker Jungmanns, a Bucker Jungmeister and the Ryan PT-22 Recruit that I flew two years ago. Most of the rest of the collection were lined up outside the hangars. A few aircraft were undergoing maintenance, such as the Broussard, Arrow Active 2 and Yak18a, and they were left inside. Once the aircraft were all on display, I brought my Jeep around to its usual spot by the tower. In addition to the aircraft, the Bristol Hercules and Rolls Royce Merlin aircraft engines were there and made a number of runs across the day.

I took around 800 photographs across the weekend, thinned down to around 600, and obviously can't show them all, so for a number of aircraft, I made some compilations to get more images into a single picture. To start with, I'll show some of the radial engined aircraft that are either based at Breighton or flew in for the day.
Focke-Wulf Fw 44 Stieglitz	Ryan PT-22 Recruit	Stearman PT-17 Kaydet	Morane-Saulnier MS.317

Comper Swift	Bucker Jungmeister	Yakovlev Yak-55	Fokker DR.I

There were many non-radial powered aircraft that were there too, and a large number of rare and unusual types that are Breighton based or came along for the day.
RAF dH Chipmunk	Miles Magister	Royal Navy dH Chipmunk	Scheibe Falke motor glider

Tipsy Junior	Chilton DW1a	Dart kitten II	Luton LA4A Minor

There were some more modern aircraft, but even some of the more modern looking types are vintage designs, such as the Pitts Special aerobatic biplane which dates back to 1944.

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Hercules & Merlin Aero Engines	Bucker Jungmann	Taylorcraft Auster J/1N	Aeronca 100

Dh87b Hornet Moth	Taylorcraft Auster Mk.V	Miles Magister	Bucker Jungmann

On Monday morning, I got the chance to fly in Charles' Auster J/1N again. The last time I had a flight in this aircraft was in 2011, but it's only recently returned to the air after maintenance which was spread over 18 months.



Monday was another scorching hot day, hot even before 9am. I packed up the tent first thing, had the Auster flight late morning, then had lunch. I left the airfield a little after 2pm. On the way home, the Jeep started to occasionally mis-fire. By the time I was much closer to home, it was coughing and spluttering and eventually lost all power and stopped about 20 miles from home.
Another nice sunset ended Sunday.		I had a bit of a fiddle and component swap to get it going, but was really too tired from the heat to be bothered. Lynne came to meet me with the normal car and took the Jeep trailer home using a 50mm ball adapter I made for the ring hitch. The RAC turned up convinced he could fix it, although he said a big "Oh!" when I asked him what 24 volt components he had with him. He wasted way too much time trying and eventually gave up and put the Jeep on the towing dolly. My trip home was over 7 hours in total - which could have been shorter if the RAC had just hooked the Jeep up from the start. It appears that the ballast resistor burned out ( he never checked that ). The following day, I fitted a spare, and the Jeep started up and ran perfectly. It was a scorching hot day going home, and I'm wondering whether the heat and the high voltage for three hours put too much strain on it. I've since messed around further with the voltage regulator to get the volts lower through the system. I also fitted a second ballast resistor to the firewall. This isn't connected, but allows a quick terminal swap should it happen again.

Packed up and almost ready to go.	Burned out ballast resistor.

The Yorkshire Air Museum's 1940's event at Elvington, was just four days away. With Lynne away that weekend, I decided I should probably put the Jeep on the flatbed trailer to get there. That would give me more time to do further local test driving where I could get the Jeep home more easily should anything go wrong again.