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.


Monday 9 July 2018

Saturday Soaring

Saturday was another beautiful sunny day, but there was no wind to speak of, but I headed along to Meio, just in case there was any at the top of the hill.

When I arrived, Chris was already there and his Vegas was buzzing the hill with the motor running, so I assembled the Heron and carried it up the hill, and no, there wasn't any wind up there either.

Vegas

I launched the Heron and no, there wasn't enough slope lift to stay airborne, so I was going to have to rely on the thermals, which fortunately there were many, and some of them were HUGE! In fact on one flight I located a thermal which took me up several hundred feet and was still rising, so I thought I'd better get it out of the thermal and bring it back to a respectable height, so I applied full crow braking and pushed the nose down with the elevator. It must have taken me a couple of minutes but now it was no longer a dot in the sky and I was feeling much happier.

Heron


During the course of the two hour session I located many thermals and only used 20% of the power in my 2200mah LiPo and I left feeling happy and thoroughly satisfied.


No comments:

Post a Comment