I first met Mickey Kinley in 1981 while living in West Palm Beach, Florida. I had introduced a neighbor, Jim MacNeil, to the sport of boomeranging a few months before I met Mickey. Jim and I had purchased several hooks from Al Gerhards. Jim was throwing one of his Gerhards hooks in a big field in Boca Raton adjacent to the Florida Atlantic campus, where he was taking Engineering classes. Suddenly, a man who had been playing golf in the distance started screaming and running towards Jim. Jim met an excited Mickey Kinley who introduced himself as a new boomerang thrower. Mickey was a woodworker by profession and had started making strip laminated traditional boomerangs on his own. He had never seen anything like a Gerhards hook. Mickey begged Jim to loan him the Gerhards hook for a day so he could make a copy. Jim agreed and told me that afternoon that he would meet Mickey on the following day. Jim and I drove down and met Mickey. The day was hot and calm. The ground was covered with burrowing owl holes, so you had to watch your feet when you were running. Mickey arrived with an arm load of his strip laminated traditionals and a single copy of the Gerhards hook. This was a PERFECT COPY, complete with weights! The only problem was that it didn't return. I was not yet an expert at tuning and Mickey decided to adjust the flight by filing down the airfoils using instructions from the Lorin Hawes book. That poor hook was filed down until there was almost nothing left . It was so thin that it eventually broke. The following year, I moved from West Palm Beach to Ohio, but I stayed in touch with Mickey. In 1983, Mickey sent me examples of his strip laminated hooks and omegas. These were absolutely beautiful and were weighted with a flight range of 75 - 100 metres. These were good returners, but had a very slight tendency to spiral out of a stable hover at the end of the flight. This was easily corrected by adding some tape flaps to slow the rotation down a bit. In 1984, Mickey moved on to make Boomalums, the first long distance boomerangs made out of Aluminum. Mickey is a famous and early pioneer in the long distance event. His name doesn't show up in the record books because he rarely went to tournaments, but his boomalums were the boomerangs of choice in the long distance event for many years.

This is an early example of the famous Boomalum, made out of Aluminum, from the early 1980s. This model was one of the easiest to throw and achieve flights exceeding 100 yards, but you needed some tuning skill to use this model because Aluminum can bend and detune with a hard landing. This is the medium sized Boomalum. Small ones and heavier ones were also made, but this was one my favorite of the series. For safety, Mickey recommended spray painting the surface with flourescent orange paint. This one does not have any paint, but it is in excellent condition. This boomerang should not be thrown by anyone not skilled in the art of long distance throwing. It is an excellent collectable and hard to find, especially in this condition. From the Brian Thomas estate.