Ted Bailey is a retired Aerospace Engineer who has been making and throwing boomerangs since the early 1970s. The first boomerangs that he marketed were multi-bladers that he sold on the C.S.U. Sacramento campus in the early 1970s. In the late 1970s, Ted sold traditional boomerangs at the West Palm Beach Mall. In the early 1980s, Ted moved to Ohio and became an active Ohio tournament competitor. He developed a line of miniature boomerangs that performed well in competition. In the mid 1980s, new products included lap joint boomerangs made out of exotic woods and high performance competition boomerangs, especially Fast Catch and MTA. Ted was active in the USBA and served as Secretary, President and as a board member in the 1980s. He was the editor of the USBA newsletter, Many Happy Returns, for two decades and also produced two independent publications: Boomerang Journal and Boomerang News. Currently, Ted is involved in internet marketing of boomerang products (this internet catalog) and teaching flight science in schools in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Find out more about Ted Bailey on the About Ted Bailey web page.

This boomerang is a very special example of the Bailey Mini-V75 that was marketed in the mid 1980s. Everyone wanted one. These were terrific fliers. Before tribladers were allowed in competition, European throwers would tune these for the Fast Catch event and win. The commercial version of the Mini-V75 was a reduced scale copy of the Bailey Lap Joint V with a 75 degree angle between the blades, made out of 4 mm plywood. Only a few Mini-V75s were made with hardwoods. This is one of the nicest ever made. Although it looks like plywood, there are 6 layers of alternating Walnut and Maple veneers with veneers of several different hardwoods and fancy marquetry strips used to make the upper ply. Other than that, the airfoiling, tuning, etc. are exactly the same as the commercial Mini V75. This is a very nice and uncommon collectable in almost mint condition. The only obvious faults are light scratches on the underside of the lift arm that can be easily repaired by steel wooling this surface and rubbing in some varnish or polyurethane. There are also some tiny pullouts of the veneer edges that were unavoidable during the manufacturing process. You have to look close to see these.