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 November 2014

The weekends flying

Hi all. Looking at the forecast for the weekend, Saturday morning looks like it is going to be dry with an ENE up to about 12 mph, slipping to NE in the afternoon, so Manmoel looks like the place to be and certainly where I will be as I shall be in the pub in the afternoon watching the Wales v S Africa game.

Sunday doesn't look so clear cut. XC Weather shows N whilst the BBC is showing NE, so a trip to the Bwlch may be in order to fly either the VR98 or the Wrecker, although the Wrecker can be a bit scary when the wind is light. But last Sunday, there was next to no wind down in the valley's and in Cardiff, but on the VR98 there was a good, stiff breeze blowing, so it would probably be fine.

If any of you reading this read RCM&E magazine, and look at the gliding forums on its website, you will probably have come across Andy Meade. Andy is big into PSS and, from the pictures I've seen, has some spectacular looking models.

Well Andy is meeting me at Manmoel tomorrow. I have no idea why he is visiting our neck of the woods as I know he flies a lot from the Orme, which we all know is the 2nd best place in the country to fly ;o). I shall get some pictures and video I'm sure to share here.

See you on the slope.

Tuesday 25 November 2014

Scorpion F3F Crash

Our good friend Clayton turned up at the VR98 slope on Sunday with his Scorpion F3F model. Shortly after launching, Clayton lost contact with the plane, as the following video shows.

Wildthing

The weather forecast for Sunday was a 10 mph north westerly so, when I arrived at the Bwlch and expecting to have to walk to the ice cream slope, I was surprised to find the wind northerly and a good deal stronger than forecast. In fact, the lift was awesome, although bitterly cold and smooth as silk, no turbulence at all, but then the Bwlch is often like that anyway.

Here is some video footage of me flying my Wildthing, which after 3 years, I'm still loving.


Tuesday 18 November 2014

10,000 Blog Views

A470soaring.blogspot.co.uk has reached a milestone by receiving 10,000 blog views. Here is a breakdown of the number of views and the countries that they have come from.

United Kingdom
5900
United States
1407
Ukraine
515
France
351
Germany
310
Russia
300
Turkey
154
Switzerland
62
Poland
52
China
50

Please keep coming back and I will keep providing more stuff. Thank you for viewing.

Monday 17 November 2014

Sunday on Fochriw again

I met up with Mark, Chris, Phil, Josh and Wayne on Fochriw. The wind was light, 10 - 12 mph I would say, but the air was very smooth.

I was only there for an hour or so and wanted to try out my new hat cam again. It seems ok but the colour isn't as good as I would have hoped. I also need to fly closer to the ridge so that the model doesn't look like a dot in the distance.

Anyway, this was me flying the X Models Whisper.


Monday 3 November 2014

Doug's Salto

Our regular visitor from Sussex, Doug spent the weekend in Gods playground again and he joined Mark, Chris and myself on Meio on Sunday where he flew this beautiful Salto. I have to say that at times it looked very real in the air.


Traceur 0 - 1 Guppy

I got a chance to fly the Traceur on Saturday on the Meio, and Clive was also flying his Guppy, the smaller brother of the Le Fish. Conditions were, um, lively, and off the slope face but, this didn't stop us having fun, and a mid air too, in which the Traceur came off worse.

This was also a chance for me to try out my new hat cam.