Mickey’s West success at The Bwlch!
A total of 7 PSSA members travelled down to Nant-y-Moel in South Wales to fly with SWSA regulars at The Bwlch over the weekend 17th/18th August where dominant Westerly winds saw Mickey’s West slope in use. This meant a drive through the infamous gate and up the gravel track – but then a 15 minute walk beyond the point at which the cars had to be parked up due to terrain, limiting the number of models on the slope at any one time. With the conditions nicely suited we saw a wide array of models from lightweight upto heavyweight PSS over the two full days of this event.
Saturday started a little calmer and more thermally once the day warmed up, with periods of huge bouyant lift often followed by a colder moment with visible sink. This was fairly readable and was handled well by all pilots safe in the knowledge there are very few hazards if landing out on this forgiving slope. After a short period of heavy rain around lunchtime (there was no mention of this in any forecast I saw!?) the winds blew more consistently and in fact continued to increase in strength as the day ran on.
The variable conditions meant you had to have the right model at the right time, and with the commute to and from the car this meant some planning or good luck was needed. Still a huge amount of flying was achieved by all in attendance, including local flyers Ceri and Owen Jones, who had a squadron of lovely traditionally built PSS models (Ceri’s BAC Canberra from the Andy Blackburn plan below) and Neil Langford who flew his large foam Hurricane.
With only 10 flyers on site it was quite an intimate fly-in, with everyone involved either launching or helping if they weren’t flying themselves. The huge airspace provided by Mickey’s slope enabled us to fly as and when we wanted, the skies never felt over-crowded, even on the Sunday when we were joined by a party of German and Swiss glider pilots on tour in the UK – their first time flying slope at the Bwlch – and we integrated their sports model flying easily into our PSS proceedings. I think they were suitably impressed with our scale models performance.
For me, model highlights started early in seeing Martin Pope fly his lovely Avro Lancastrian on the Saturday morning, my first chance to photograph this model in flight which looked great despite the murky conditions at the time! Pete Jennison and Harry Twist had a great formation flight with their respective Me-109 and Mustang on the Saturday, and later in the day when the winds were higher, Jez Billington was brave enough to test fly his new Folland Gnat having already had some awesome stick time with his large DH-108 Swallow.
The winds on Sunday were a little stronger all day – as per the forecast – and at times on day 2 we even saw a little sunshine, a feature that was sadly lacking from the Saturday. In an attempt to try and avoid the walk from the cars, upon setting up we tried (in vain) to fly from the South Westerly slope, with Martin Pope and Steve McLaren both testing the lift out with their models. Sadly, the winds were just too Westerly and we soon concluded that the walk was again necessary. At least we tried.
Model highlights from the second day for me included Bob Jennings with his colourful duo of the Fouga Magister in French Airforce tiger scheme and his Swiss Airforce Target-Towing DH Vampire, with some impressive flying put on with both models! Harry Twist flew his lovely Royal Navy Phantom II and Pete Jennison test flew his 50″ span Razor – an EDF sports model converted to PSS – it showed good promise but I think just needed a bit more lift to properly get going!
We flew until 5:30pm both days, on the Saturday we pulled stumps in time to head back out to the Bunch of Grapes in Pontypridd, which was as good as ever for both beer and fine food.
All in all a successful and enjoyable weekends PSS flying! More photos from this weekend can be viewed HERE. Our next planned event sees us back in Llandudno up on The Great Orme 21st/22nd September, fingers crossed for some good South-Westerlies that weekend!