Monday, August 20, 2007

The history of my long distance boomerangs






I became ''infected'' with the ld- virus in 1997. During this time, ld were heavy and constructed using the motto "add more weight". I started something new and adapted the ideas of Axel Heckner (GER), a name can not be mentioned often enough in the world of LD-boomerangs! He made sub 100g boomerangs in the early 90's, throwing a german record in 1997: 139m! Considering that the world record was 149m, I developed my own small and light LD-boomerangs.
With this "Pathfinder" (3mm paxolin) I threw 124m in Troyes 1997, holding the swiss record for about 30min. Lorenz Gubler (SUI) won the competition with 132m and was record holder for 1 year.






This is the evolution of the "Pathfinder" above. During the warm-up of the swiss championship at June 1998 I've lost my best ld-boomerang and didn't have much hope to finally break the world record of 149m. So I took the second choice, the "Pathfinder II" shown.
To my surprise the measured distance of my best throw was 155m! But this world record held for only one month





World Championships in St.Louis (USA)
Parallel to my developments, a certain David Schummy threw 185m in practise. He used a "buzzwhip", a ld-boomerang without any additional lead weights! He announced to beat the world record in St.Louis.
The funny thing is, that actually a new record could not have been thrown. The reason was, that during the second round of 5 throws, only the Top 10 throwers were allowed to participate. An unwritten rule said that records can only be thrown under open conditions. I could barely qualify with a range of only 103m, wind was really down.
Second round: David Schummy made 151m, I had a range of 143m in the now better wind conditions. Finally, Schummy had 174m which was considered as a new world record. My last throw was far either, the judges on the field were discussing minutes where the furthest point of my boomerang was. The result was 172m. At least this was a new european record.
Back in Switzerland again. The fight for 200m !
During the autunm/winter 1998/1999 I was desiging a lot of new shapes and made them, now using 3mm glassfibre-epoxy. The new shape is much rounder & closer to a question mark. In practise I had ranges of >190m and the question arose, if 200m is possible.
The 27th of march 1999
During a small comtetition in Switzerland, near Fribourg, I finally had the opportunity to test this new boomerang, called "Voyager". It was the first or second throw which was valid (came back and crossed a gate of 40m, the throw was in the centre of the latter). The measurement said: 192m !
The world record has come back to Switzerland, but I wanted more... Only 8m remaining!
Powered up by the new record I threw with all my strength and finished with 207m
So I was the first person who threw a boomerang more than 200m, witnessed by at least 15 persons!
Just one month later, at 1st of May 1999 I managed to throw 238 m. This is still the current world record!

3 comments:

Laurent Froment said...

Thanks for the story i didn't knew at all. Really interesting !
Next step : over 250m... if the field is big enough ;-)

Boomerangs & Technologies said...

Salut Manu,

super idée que ce blog, merci pour ces infos et pour le partage de ta passion.

à bientôt sur les terrains

Big M

Jean-Luc said...

For the first LD tournament in France to May by the B33 club (Bordeaux), we would like to use your article in preface, :' The history of my long distance boomerangs' to the FBF newsletter of April with a small word of the champion. Of course, I will send to you by mail the whole article before publication.
Many tks
Jean-Luc