Ozone Buzz Z5 - Tow to Desert Thermalling & baby XC!

Finally! My human took me up for a taste of punchy desert thermals! We had been waiting patiently for over 6 months for this chance. Went out earlier than usual for the tow, and it paid off.
My human was freaked-out by the surges while on tow, despite my and his instructor's reassurances. After he calmed down, we made it up to about 8200' MSL ( ~ 4000' AGL) and pinned off (16:10).
The air alternated between big sink and big lift. Had an exciting low save from about 400' AGL (24:55) after being in some major blue-hole sink for a few minutes that erased all of our altitude from the tow. We rode that savior-thermal all the way back above 7300'. Some wild bucking-bronco action in that one (29:35); at one point we hit a surge that pulled about 2 gees and gave my human a momentary touch of vertigo (30:15). Good thing he had been practicing at Marshall, so even though this was rougher air, he was fairly relaxed as I wiggled overhead.
This kind of air is a good example of the advantage of a nice stable B wing - let's me take care of stability while the human thinks about finding lift.
After that nice elevator ride, at the advice of his instructor, we headed due west. Surprisingly, we found more lift, just cruising in a straight line! Whoo-hoo - no need to turn, just fly and go up! (44:05). That straight-line lift took us back above 8000' .
All good things have to end, and we hit more sink. Very low - about 200' feet up - there was some ground bubbles of warm air that let us stay up a few more minutes, but my human was unable to work them to get back in the action. Had a nice safe landing, and (mostly) kept me out of the thorns. Distance from launch about 9 miles, from pin-off about 5 miles.
His instructor had launched PPG after reeling in the tow and flew over to say "Hi" and gloat a bit while my human slogged about 1.5 miles back to the highway.
A GREAT day!

[@safranpollen]

from Cloud to Cloud perhaps more pushing the bar :-) nice Babyflight !

[@NelsonsWings]

+safranpollen My human agrees. But he was caught in a wide blue hole... massive sink. Bar is always good on Z5s when flying upwind!

[@safranpollen]

:-) I have seen, around ya clouds and ya in the middle of it out in the blue, shit happens::-) it`s south africa ? or the States ?

[@NelsonsWings]

+safranpollen LOL Would love my human to take us to South Africa. For now we are stuck in the USA, Texas, NM and CA.

[@safranpollen]

For me desert flying is in sum way loose the horizon, I `m used to fly with mountains and forest, valley`s. only sand and cactus ,where ya look .. Texas,...I prefer black forest:-)

[@NelsonsWings]

+safranpollen My human used to live in Alaska. He enjoys all terrain. Wait until you see the flight we just had...

[@jeffreygritsch7818]

did you forget how to release

[@NelsonsWings]

+Jeffrey Gritsch Lol it seemed that way, yes? We were playing with high tows, operator had 10,000 feet of new line.