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.


Sunday, 7 September 2014

Windless Sunday

Lots of text messages were being sent back and forth between myself, Chris & Mark to decide where to fly. 

The forecast was for a very light north easterly breeze. Our choices were the Wrecker at the Bwlch, but with this being a near vertical, 1000ft cliff, this can be a butt clenching experience flying in such light winds. I know, I've done it and lost a plane half way down. Fochriw would have been our favourite venue but you could bet the paragliders would have been there too. So we decided to play safe and head for Meio Common. 

On arrival it was obvious that we were going to struggle as most of the breeze in our faces were being generated by thermals, and that wind means sink. 

Mark managed to get his newly repaired Mini Graphite up, (good to see that flying again Mark), but ended up running out of air and had to land. Chris had the same even with his Experience Pro F3J. So most of the flying was done with Libelle and Blaster DLG's. 

I did try to give the Traceur it's first flight and walked back up the slope where the slope is shallow and gave her a chuck. She wanted to go down so I gave her six clicks of elevator up trim and threw her again. She flew nicely all tbe way down and over the steep part of the slope. I managed one traverse of the slope before I ran out of air to keep me up and had to land in the ferns 10 metres down the slope. 

Ah well, we occasionally get days like that. Hopefully next weekend will be better and I can give the Traceur a proper maiden flight. 

 

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