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 20 January 2016

More Moth Build continued .............

So on Saturday I only managed to get one job done, and that was to glue the wing into the fuselage.

I had marked the wing during a dry fit to show the position of the fuse and I laid onto the wing, (both top and bottom surfaces), two strips of 1" (25mm) masking tape. This is to stop any glue that should be squeezed out of the fuse from sticking to the wing itself.

The wing was pulled out of the fuse by about ¾" (20mm) and a generous dollop of UHU POR was squeezed onto the wing and spread around, both on the top and the bottom. The wing was then pulled back into the fuse and then out the other side and the process repeated, so there was plenty of glue to stick the wing to the fuse.


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The next job was to take the supplied elevons and create a bevel on the ¼" TE end, for this I used a razor plane and finally a light sanding. The elevons were then cut to length and the tips shaped as per the supplied template before being wrapped in 75 micron laminate film, which really stiffens them up.


The elevons were then attached to the wing using 1" (25mm) X weave tape and then a hot iron used to really stick them down.


Before I glued the wing to the fuselage, I decided it would be a good idea to ensure the servo's actually worked. Really I should have tested the servo's BEFORE I fitted them into the wing. So I found a spare receiver, set up the Moth on my transmitter, and bound the RX to the TX, and fortunately all worked ok. However, when I tried to fit the RX into the electronics compartment, it was too big and wouldn't fit.

I usually use the Hobby King AFHSS Hitec Minima compatible RX in my models as they are really cheap, but I haven't had any problems with these at all. So an alternative had to be found.

I was thinking of using a original Hitec Minima RX, but after posting my issue on the BARCS forum, a alternative product was advised, a Frsky AFHSS Minima compatible unit available from T9 Hobbysport. This isn't a full range unit, but it does have a range of 1000m, so this would be perfectly adequate, after all, this model is designed for fast passes along the slope, so I'll be lucky if it gets 500m away from me.



I connected it up to the Moth, bound it to the TX, and it slides into the cavity very nicely.

I have been informed that the stumpy aerial has a habit of coming away from it's connection, but that a small blob of hot melt glue stops that occurring, so I will have to do that.






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