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, 8 May 2017

Manmoel Common flying

Hi guys

I met up with Nick Rees on Saturday at Manmoel Common for an afternoon session.

The wind was supposed to be coming from a ENE direction, however when I got there it was definitely slightly off face and a NE, so we would have been better going to Fochriw. However, we decided to stick it out at Manmoel.

I rigged up the 213 which now has its new livery.



After making  repairs from my landing out the previous weekend, the CoG had moved slightly and it was a little nose heavy, but the flight was fine until I discovered after landing that one of the flap servo mounts had come a little unstuck, so that needs sorting out this week.

Nick had brought along a NCFM M60 and a 3m Pilatus B4. However, I think the 30 mph wind was a little too much for the B4 and during the flight we could see the wings flexing quite a lot, and then suddenly they appeared to have an extraordinary amount of dihedral, so something had obviously gone wrong and Nick quite rightly decided to try for a landing.

Fortunately the ailerons and air brakes were still operative and amazingly he managed to land it safely, as you can see from the following photographs.




Nick had replaced the carbon wing joiner with an alloy one, and in that wind it just wasn't up to the job and it had bent. I think he will resume using the carbon joiner.




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1 comment:

  1. slopesoaringsussex9 May 2017 at 08:31

    Really like the new livery Steve. Finishes it off very nicely. Well done!

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