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.


Friday, 20 October 2017

Weekend Flying Forecast 21st/22nd October

Firstly let me begin with apologies for not providing a flying forecast for last weekend. It was my birthday on Sunday and I made a last minute decision to take the Friday off work, as the weather conditions looked like some decent flying might be possible. As it turned out, I did have some decent flying and I also managed to fly on the Saturday. More of that later.

So without further ado, here is your weekend flying forecast.

Saturday  - Don't bother, stay in bed, build a model, go to the pub, anything else but find a big hill to fly off as severe gales and heavy rain are forecast.

Sunday - A better looking day but with possible showers. Wind NW to WNW 30 mph gusting to 45 mph, so lead sleds and ballast at the ready. Your slope choices will be the Ice Cream slope at the Bwlch or, Meio Common or, Abertysswg.

 So as I said earlier, I went flying on Friday and Saturday last week. Friday was the better day wind wise with 25 mph constant and gusts to around 36 mph on Meio Common. The L213 got an outing and flew very well, but I also had my first flights with the Phoenix Models Carrera that I bought from Big Phil. What a superb little model that is! Very stable but also aerobatic. I can see I'm going to have a lot of fun flying that.

The following video of the Carrera was taken on the Sunday when the wind speeds were an awful lot lighter than on Friday.

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2 comments:

  1. Russell H15 November 2017 at 14:49

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  2. Russell H15 November 2017 at 14:51

    I built a Phoenix Models Sierra Mk2 last year, that's a sparkling performer too. Its aerobatic abilities currently far exceed my piloting skills...

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