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.


Tuesday, 30 October 2018

Yayyyyy I finally went flying

Saturday was a lovely, bright day but very chilly. I had couch to 5km coaching duties to perform first thing in the morning but my afternoon was free and with a good breeze forecast from the north I couldn't waste the opportunity to go flying. So at about 12:30 the car was loaded and I had a 1 hour drive up to Hirwaun Common, my preferred northerly slope. I much prefer this over the VR98 at the Bwlch as the lift is usually better and the landing zone too.

Upon arrival there were a group of lads from Bournemouth and Bristol already flying and, shortly afterwards 3 local lads turned up as well as my friend Chris, who had seen my Facebook post and decided to join me rather than go to the Bwlch.

I decided to begin my flying by lobbing off the fully ballasted Balistik, and I absolutely loved it. This model was going like a rocket and I was having a whale of a time flying it. Later on I flew it again with Chris's M60 and I was pleased to see that the Balistik appeared to be a little faster 😊

I'd also taken the big L213A and had a couple of good flights with that. This flew well and will in fact fly in any wind speed from 15 mph but, it really comes alive in 30 mph or more as I have discovered when flying it in 40 mph plus at Rhossili. I have some changes that I want to make to this model so hopefully I will get a chance to do this over the winter.

So all in all I had a cracking few hours flying and, at the moment it looks like I'm free to fly again next Saturday too. Hooray 😃.


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