A470 Soaring: April 2018

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, 13 April 2018

Weekend flying forecast 14th/15th April

Yayyyy it looks like I'm finally going to get some flying in this weekend! And it's about time too. The weather still isn't great but it is slowly improving. So let's have a look at what we can expect in S Wales for this weekend.

Saturday - a dry, cloudy day but with some sunny intervals mid afternoon. Temperature around 13°C and the all important wind being south easterly about 9 mph gusting to 15 mph. So your slope choices will be Back of Wrecker, the far side of the Crest or Blaen Bran.

Sunday - after a wet start in the morning, the rain may clear to sunny intervals with occasional showers in the afternoon. We still have that south easterly wind but it is much stronger at 15 mph gusting to 27 mph. Your slope choices will be the same as for Saturday.

I am heading off to Sussex this weekend to fly the South Downs and that area with Paul Hampshire and his mates from Slope Soaring Sussex. As the wind forecast for Saturday is very light, I'm taking along my 2m electric power thermal soarer, just in case. Sunday it looks like the wind will be stronger so I'm taking Big Bird, (L213A), Phoenix models Carrera and the Genesis chevron wing.

Have a great weekend all.