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.


Tuesday 29 March 2016

Easter Fun Day on Mickey's

Hi all

So yesterday most of the boys were out flying on Mickey's slope at the Bwlch. The wind was south westerly and around 30 mph, so the lift was pretty damned good, as is normal for Mickey's.

On arrival there was a group of lads from Bristol already there and flying. Their glass ships were flying fine, but they were having trouble launching their foamies, as was our Clive who had a bit of a mishap whilst launching his correx Mig. In fact, watching him trying to launch was quite comical, as you'll see in the video. Sorry Clive.


3 comments:

  1. Hi Steve, thanks for taking the time out from flying to put together this video - and yes, that MiG is awkward to launch unless you have giant gorilla hands a la Monsieur May! I had no idea where the MiG was after I let it go as I was staring directly into the sun. It was only when a pantomime chorus of "Behind you!!" was shouted did I have any clue.. I ALMOST saved it! lol!
    A great day with some fine company.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Looks like you had as much as we did yesterday. Not sure where the Bristol guys were from as only one of my club mates slopes and he and the rest of my Facebook rc group were with me. Any ideas?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think they said they usually slope at Weston, on the headland there I guess. I think one or two of them were struggling with launching their foamies on such a big slope. Too much elevator input and not pushing out from the launch.

    ReplyDelete