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.


Wednesday 30 May 2012

A Contrasting Weekends Flying

Saturday 26th  
Well, what a weekend that was! I met Mark up on the Crest, the wind blowing +30mph which equates to, well, an awesome amount of lift.

Mark was flying his Ballistik, a Ron Broughton designed and built chevron wing, fully ballasted and weighing a ton but was living up to it's name on the Crest. However, Mark over cooked a multiple roll to close to the cliff face and it ended up as part of the cliff, about 20' down from the lip. Ordinarily it would have been fairly easy to retrieve, however in that wind we decided to play safe and leave it there until the following day.

In the meantime, Roger turned up, glider in hand and looking thoroughly knackered. He had lost his glider at the bottom of the cliff the previous weekend, about 500ft down and had just retrieved it. So leaving Roger to recover and catch his breath, we walked back along the Crest to collect his back pack 2 models, an RCRCM Dorado and an X Models Stingray, the later being ballasted to 7.5Kg. Chris then turned up with his Mini Vec and Air One, I think, because he didn't get that one out of the bag.

Roger flew his Stingray, Chris his Mini Vec, Mark his Mini Grahite and I didn't fly as out of 4 models that flew, 3 were damaged on landing due to the horrendous rotor.

Sunday 27th May
On Sunday, Mark, Chris, Phil and myself met on the Crest, but in complete contrast to Saturday, there was barely enough wind to fly in the morning, but then the wind swung around to the south so we decided to pack up and drive down to the Meio.

When we arrived, the wind was still southerly and Meio is definitely a south west, but we marched to the top anyway.

So looking for some fun whilst we waited for the wind to swing around, we decided to have some fun by DLGing Phils Weasel. That kept us amused for a while before we headed back towards the edge of the slope where we discovered that the wind had swung to the SW and we managed some fun flying. We also managed to get Phils latest acquisition flying nicely, a Phoenix models Ban She.

Check out this weekends videos below:





Sunday 13 May 2012

Ice Cream Slope Thermal Fun ......... or not!

Saturday 12th May
I met Mark up on the Ice Cream Slope at the Bwlch, the sun was out, big fluffy white clouds were floating across the sky, and huge thermals were coming through. The only problem with that was that they left in their wake a huge whole of dead air, as you can see from the following video's. Chris in particular launched his Experience Pro F3J straight into some of that dead air. Down and down she went, but Chris kept cool and managed to grab what little air there was and get her back to the top of the slope. Phew!




Sunday 6 May 2012

Mayday Holiday Weekend

Saturday 5th May - Fochriw
The wind blowing a north easterly again, we decided to head up to Fochriw, which is where we were last weekend. We being myself, Mark, Roger and Chris, and between us I think there were 9 different models.
The flying was great with very fast air, some fantastic thermals and blowing about 18-20mph I would guess. The following pictures tell the story.