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 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 he would meet Mickey on the following day. Jim and I drove down to throw with 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. The Gerhards hook copy was filed down until 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. They were weighted and had a flight range of 75 - 100 metres. These were good returners, but they 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 Boomalum was made out of Aluminum in the early 1980s. This is not the thick and heavy extreme distance model. This is the extra light sports model with an advertised range of 40-60 metres. In 1985, I spent 3 hours in a field with Gary Braoadbent fine tuning a mini-boomalum hook, exactly like this one. Gary would throw it and I would fine tune it until the range was out beyond 100 yards. When we were done, Gary carefully packed the mini-hook in cotton in a small rigid box and didn't open the box until the USBA Nationals in California a few months later. Gary took the Mini-Boomalum hook out of the box and took third place with a flight of 105 yards! This model is also a lot safer to catch than many other long distance booms. Although you still have to watch your face (as with all LD booms), I have never cut or hurt my hand using this model and I have no problem catching this one one-handed behind the back. The surface of this boomalum hook is spray painted with flourescent orange paint (except on the tips) to make it more visible in flight. This one is in very good condition with only minor paint scratches. It is a terrific collectable and difficult to find in this condition.