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, 20 June 2012

Two Days in June

Saturday & Sunday 9th/10th June
Phil picked me up from home on the Saturday morning, and so with a westerly wind blowing we headed off to Eglwsilan Common, where the wind was blowing about 25mph.

Phil had brought along his Wildthing, Weasel and BanShe, I had the Wildthing, Synergy and Banana and we hit the skies with a brace of Wildthings. Phil had attached his key fob camera to his cap to do some filming, and then later attached it to his Wildthing, pointing it directly downwards to try and capture me flying directly below him. You can see the resulting video below.

Both the BanShe and Synergy are EPP planes from the Stan Yeo stable of Phoenix models and require a good blow to get the best out of them as they are quite heavy. We certainly had a good blow and they did fly well. It'll be good to see how well Phils BanShe does go once he's used to flying it.

I met Mark on the Crest at the Bwlch on Sunday morning. The wind was light, but on the Crest, that cliff generates a huge amount of lift even on light wind days.

I began by launching my Hawk, a foamy wing that loves light conditions, and she flew beautifully with no turbulence in the air whatsoever. Mark flew his Mini Graphite, a mouldie that also loves light conditions, also his Willow F3F and I also flew my Banana.

Unusually for the Crest, there was no rotor and so landing was easy, meaning we didn't have to walk 100 yards back to get out of the rotor, which can be horrendous on that slope.

All in all, it was a good weekends flying, now all we need is some good, summer weather.


Wildthings from Chuck Glider on Vimeo.
A pair of SAS Wildthings flying together from Eglwsilan Common, S Wales with on board footage pointing directly downwards from the model.
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1 comment:

  1. Phil21 June 2012 at 23:30

    It was a most enjoyable day on the slope, the Banshe was flying nice.
    With days like that I wonder why I bother with powered models.
    Phil

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