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.


Friday, 16 May 2014

Fridays Flying

Phil decided to give today a miss due to the lack of forcasted wind, but Mark joined me and we walked over to Mickey's.
When we got there, there wasn't a constant breeze to fly in so we sat around for an hour until I felt I could throw out a foamie to see what would happen. It took a few attempts but eventually I managed to catch a thermal and we were on as I managed a 10 minute flight.
So we unravelled the bungee and anchored it close to the slope edge and I launched the Whisper. On release it shot off at a severe angle to the left which I managed to correct but I still managed to get a lot of height. As I walked back towards the slope edge, she had sniffed out a thermal and I managed to keep her up for probably around 15 minutes before I ran out of lift and managed to land her on top of a patch of reeds.
We launched Marks Race M F3F ship on the bungee and again she headed off to the left, (it must be the way I throw it) he straightened her out but it came off the hook early. Still, he probably had about 150ft of height and off it headed over the slope where he managed to find the thermals and managed 15 minutes before the Kamikaze urges took over and he put it into a vertical dive followed by a couple of big loops.
The foamies came out again before I had one more final fling with the bungee, resulting in a 20 minute flight and me having to work hard to bring her down for a landing.
So all in all it wasn't a great days flying but at least we flew and enjoyed what we did. 
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