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, 2 June 2014

A weekends flying

Well what a fun weekend that was!

I met up with Mark and Chris on Meio Common on Saturday morning to find that there was hardly a breath of wind but, Chris broke out his new Multiplex Solius, which tuned out to be a nice, light wind flier, and for me it was my new Dream Flight Libelle DLG. I also set up my high start bungee to give me some height advantage, launching the Whisper over the slope.

I maidened my new Elegant thermal soarer but quickly realised that there was a problem as it kept wanting to gently turn to the left and for all my efforts, it did not want to turn to the right. All the wing control movements are identical and I can see no sign of a warped wing. So I'm going to have to look at that before I fly it again.

On Sunday I was joined by Mark, Chris, Phil and Wayne. Conditions were very light to begin with but picked up in the afternoon.

Phil maidened his Algebra 100 off the slope and then we gave it a few launches from the bungee, this being Phil's first ever bungee launch, and very successful it was too. I think Phil just needs to get some experience and build his confidence in flying a rudder/elevator only model.

Wayne had his first proper flight with his Wildthing, which was successful too.

Chris, amongst other models, was flying his Blaster 3 DLG, both on the slope, and further back away from the slope on the commons flat top.

I launched my Whisper from the slope and with the bungee but I had the most fun with the Libelle. Later in the day I was flying it back from the slope, it was just hovering, maybe only 40' off the ground when it began to rise up in a thermal, and went up and up and up. Eventually, as my neck was aching so much from looking up, I tried to break out from the thermal by circling it behind me but it picked up so much speed that the ailerons became ineffective, as did the elevator, but fortunately the rudder was still functioning and got me out of trouble.

Anyway, here is a snapshot video of the weekends action. I shall put on some separate videos during the week of the various models we had flying this weekend.


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