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, 11 April 2016

Foamie Fun & PSS on Blain Bran

So yesterdays forecast was for a bright, dry day with wind speeds of 23 mph ish until late afternoon when rain was set to come in. And the forecast on this occasion was accurate.

With a south easterly blowing, Phil and myself decided to try flying Blain Bran again as it is only a few minutes drive away for both of us, rather than the 50 - 60 minute drive to fly Back of Wrecker at the Bwlch, a slope neither of us are particularly keen to fly.

This time Mike, Andrew and Mark decided to give it a go with us also and we arranged to meet at the car park for 11 AM.

Once assembled we headed up the rocky track before turning off to our right and a short walk then to the top up the slope.

Once there we chucked a few foamies up to test out the wind, which seemed to be pretty damned good, but, we felt that a move a little more to our left would benefit us, which it did.

So with the wind gusting up to 30 mph we all launched again for some foamie fun.

Andrew had brought with him a PSS Handley Page Victor V Bomber which had been built, by his father I seem to recall, some 20 years earlier but it had never flown. So Andrew had checked it over, installed radio equipment and chucked it off the hill. And very well it flew too. Nice one Andrew.

Mike joined him in the air with a Mark Kettle designed EPP Victor Vulcan V Bomber, which looked great when flying alongside the Victor, even though the scale was wrong between the two models.

Phil launched his new correx built BF-109, but unfortunately shortly after launching, he flew it too far to the left, out of the main lift where he lost orientation and the model flew back over the brow of the hill and landed out of sight. Unfortunately he destroyed the wing, but Phil being Phil said that he'd have another wing built by the end of the week. Hoorayyyyyy.

All the time we were up there the wind was picking up speed, but battery packs were beginning to run low on some models and so we decided to call it a day.

I think we all enjoyed flying Blain Bran, including Mark who said it is definitely a good alternative to Back of Wrecker.

This Friday I am driving up to Llandudno for the first PSSA meet of the year, so I shall be reporting back with flying tales and videos from that event.

Enjoy the video of Blain Bran taken on my new GoPro Hero 4 Session.

Happy flying
Steve


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