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.


Thursday, 4 July 2019

Featured Post Update and last weekends flying

Hey guys, I've changed the Featured Post to a post from July 2016 called Ballistic Lift on Mickey's. Now this is where we should be flying by now, on Mickey's Meio or Rhossili with westerly and south westerly winds. Last Sunday Nick, Dave & myself met up at The Bwlch with the intention of flying Mickey's, however there was a very low cloud base which was just skirting the top of the slope so we made the decision to go to Meio.

What a difference Meio was compared with dark, cold Bwlch. The sun was shining and it was definitely warmer. Once we'd walked up the side of the slope to the top there was a really good breeze blowing but, upon chucking a model off we discovered that it was really bumpy, turbulent air and not much fun to fly, which is unusual for Meio.

I was flying my Ballistik chevron wing and went to perform a reversal but in the bumpy air I overcooked the maneuver and in the process of trying to recover the model I lost it completely and it went down. Fortunately the only damage was a bit of dented EPP foam which should easily be repaired.

Dave flew his Mini Blade and he also went down after he zigged when he should have zagged. Again there wasn't too much damage and I'm sure that will be back in the air in no time.

Nick had brought along his now completed Graecalis but we all thought it wise that he didn't send it out on its maiden flight as trying to trim a new model in those conditions wouldn't have been easy or fun. I'll leave you with a few pictures of it anyway.





As for this weekend? Saturday is currently looking like a light north westerly up to 10 mph and Sunday, well that's a day for the DLG's or power assisted models to do some thermal soaring.
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