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, 17 November 2017

Weekend Flying Forecast & Zagi Bash

I hope everyone has had a good week? This Sunday is looking like being the best flying day of the weekend although the wind is looking light.

Saturday - Rain is forecast with a 14 mph westerly wind, so if you can get away from that rain then there could be some good flying to be had either at Rhossili or on Mickey's at the Bwlch.

Sunday (Zagi Bash day) - A dry but cloudy day with a 6 mph south westerly forecast. So your slope choices will be Mickey's at the Bwlch or Meio Common.

That being the case, Zagi Bash will take place on Mickey's, but I'm guessing that people will meet up at the Ice Cream slope lay by.  Now the Bwlch can be a bit of a funny place when wind under 10 mph is forecast. Usually you can count on there being up to 10 mph more wind up there than is forecast for Cardiff airport, but if less than 10 is forecast than one of two things can happen, in my experience.
  1. You will get more wind, and so with 6 mph forecast there could be 10 - 12 mph, or
  2. The wind remains at 6 mph.
I have experienced both. There have been days when I've driven up there and the leaves on the trees have barely been moving, and I have convinced myself that there will be more wind up there. However, upon arriving at the slope there has still been barely a breath of wind. That has happened on more occasions than I care to remember.

The first time we held a PSSA event on Mickey's, we walked up to the slope and I had to resort to flying a powered thermal soarer as there was barely a breath of wind. The wind did pick up by midday to about 12 mph if my memory is correct, but this is hardly what you want for a slope combat competition. Lets keep our fingers crossed that the forecast changes before Sunday and we have some fun, combat flying.

See you there.


The Bwlch

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