About A470 Soaring


This is the blog for a few guys who spend their time flying radio controlled gliders, or slope soarer's, from the many and varied slopes around SE Wales.

This usually begins at the northern end of Cardiff, driving north up the A470 up to the Heads of the Valley's and the southern fringe of the Brecon Beacons. But the A470 road continues its windy way all the way to N Wales.

There are many slopes available for most wind directions, the most famous being the area between Nant-y-Moel and Treorchi known as The Bwlch, which has some of the best slopes and flying in Europe with many F3F competitions being held there each year and visited by many fliers from Europe and around the world. At 1500 feet (450m) above sea level, there is usually more wind than not, and certainly more than at sea level.

If you require any further information, are new to slope soaring or are visiting the area, please contact Steve at steve.houghton59@gmail.com . I look forward to hearing from you.

Take a look at Page 2 (look below and to the left here) for Google maps of our most popular Flying Sites.


Sunday, 8 April 2012

Easter Weekend

Saturday saw myself and Mark meet up with Roger (Cliff Hanger) from Swansea and Doug from Guildford at Hirwaun Common. The wind was light, about 10mph with patchy thermals, but the drizzle came in from the Brecon Beacons which saw us pack up and go home after just a couple of hours.

Sunday and the wind was from the NW as it had been on Saturday and as I didn't have a lot of fuel in the car, and I was going to be commuting to Bristol each day this week, I decided the Meio was the place for me to fly. The lift and thermals were a bit patchy but slowly improved as the morning went on.


Mark had gone to the Bwlch to fly the Ice Cream Slope, and I had a great view of that huge cliff called The Crest from my vantage point, and so I noticed when the Welsh clag came in and totally covered the area. Mark phoned me to say that he started off flying the Ice Cream Slope but then the wind changed direction and so he made the half mile or so walk to Mickey's which is SW facing, but when he got there, the wind was right off the face so he decided to come over to the Meio. Mark had said that whilst on the Ice Cream Slope, he had his Willow F3F going faster than he had ever flown before.


I had to leave just as Mark arrived at Meio, but he sent me a message later saying that the wind had swung round to the favoured SW slope on Meio and that his Willow had been flying stupidly fast. He's certainly getting the hang of flying that model, which is a fabulous entry level F3F ship.


Until next time, happy flying.


Steve
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