A470 Soaring: September 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, 28 September 2018

Weekend flying forecast 29th/30th Sept

Hi all, well September is coming to an end, the temperature is dropping and the days are getting shorter. But often this means that we get more wind too, although sometimes, much more wind than we need. So lets take a look and see if there will be some good flying conditions for this weekend.

Saturday - A fine and bright day with temperatures around 15°C, but the wind is variable, starting off ENE before swinging around to southerly by mid afternoon and carrying on around to NW by the evening, but at 6 - 8 mph this is not good flying conditions.

Sunday - A mostly cloudy but dry day with temperatures up to 14°C. The wind is much more stable at up to 25 mph north westerly. Your slope choices today will be Meio or the Ice Cream Slope at the Bwlch.

I'm busy running a half marathon on Sunday so I won't be flying, but I was hoping to get some stick time on Saturday but that won't happen if the forecast remains the same. I may have to resort to flying powered instead.

For any of you who are interested, I also have another blog which is all about my running, you can view it by clicking the link HERE.

Have a good weekend all and happy flying.

Friday, 14 September 2018

Flying forecast 15th/16th September

Summer is over and there is a chill in the air. The temperature has dropped and hopefully now we will get some autumn wind to enable us to have the flying fun that we've missed throughout the spring and summer. I can't remember a summer with so little wind.

Anyway, lets have a look and see if any flying will be possible this weekend.

Saturday - A mixture of sunshine and showers, 16°C and a predominately westerly wind of up to 20 mph. Your slope choices will be Rhossili, Mickey's, Eglwysilan and Meio. If I didn't have to be somewhere first thing in the morning, I would have headed up to Rhossili, but I may be able to get a couple of hours in on Meio in the afternoon.

Sunday - A cloudy but dry day, 16 - 19°C with a SSW to SW wind of 10 - 12 mph, so your slope choices will be Mickeys and Meio. I don't know what I am doing yet on Sunday, I should have been racing but I am resting a pelvis ligament injury so, I may be able to get a couple of hours in on Meio.

Whatever you are doing this weekend, have a good one and, happy flying.