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, 13 May 2015

PSS English Electric Lightning

So back in March I purchased from Paul Hampshire at Slope Soaring Sussex, a Flair models English Electric Lightning PSS model, which had been stripped down to the bare balsa.

My intention was to have this ready to fly in time for the PSSA event at the Great Orme in Llandudno on the 27th/28th June and also so I'd have something to fly at the PSSA event at the Bwlch in September.

So with this in mind I got down to doing some refurbishing. There wasn't that much to do really apart from a lot of sanding down, which it really needed before the iron on film went on.

It's been 35 years since I last applied shrink film to a model and I was really impressed with the stuff I bought from Hobby King, which was a fraction of the price of the more popular brands but I found was applied very easily and shrinks very well. In particular the backing peeled off very easily. I will definitely be using this stuff again.

I had originally got some paint to apply to the plastic canopy, but then as I looked at it, I had an idea and tried a different approach. This was to use coloured parcel tape which I just happened to have in the right colours. It took a bit of shaping and may look a little rough around the edges on close inspection, but from a few feet away it isn't noticeable.

So what's left to do? I have to spray paint and attach the belly bulge, find and fit a pilot figure, fit elevator & rudder servo's, battery and RX, buy some decals and chuck it off a hill on Sunday.

Heres a few pictures.






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3 comments:

  1. slopesoaringsussex14 May 2015 at 07:13

    Steve, you have done a fabulous job! Well done mate. Look forward to seeing it fly.

    ReplyDelete
  2. SteveH14 May 2015 at 08:15

    Thanks Paul. Maybe I'll give it a chuck when you visit next week, and there will definitely be video available.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Phil14 May 2015 at 13:15

    Nice job Steve...Fingers crossed for some decent weather on Sunday.

    ReplyDelete

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