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.


Monday, 26 May 2014

Wildthing in the doodas!

I knew I wasn't really going to get a chance to get much flying in this weekend, if any. Partly due the the weather and other commitments I had planned.
On Saturday my girlfriend and I had planned to go for a walk up Cwmcarn Forest Drive and to the Silurian hill fort, which dates back to 500BC, on the top of Twmbarlum, a 1,375 metre mountain which overlooks Newport and Cardiff.
This was the place where I took my very first foray into the world of slope soaring 3 years ago so, I couldn't go up there without at least taking with me some foam to throw off the hill which, just happens to have a SE facing slope, and which direction was the wind blowing that day? Yep, you guessed.
So I threw off the Wildthing and, to be fair, the flying was pretty good although a little turbulent if you got a bit too close to the ground, so I made sure I kept some good height.
The landing was text book and I walked the few yards over to where it had come to rest only to find the nose buried in a very wet, sloppy, fresh, cow pat.



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