--by phnxhawk--
A grim bit of news has been making its way through the boomerang community over the last week. Volker Behrens, the man behind the Blue Star line of boomerangs, recently passed away. I first saw mention of it in a notice from Ted Bailey regarding upcoming changes to his catalog. Further discussion quickly followed in the Boomerang_Talk Yahoo! group (topic starting with message #10371). I thought I would post this to the blog in case any of our readers have not yet heard.
Manny, Charles, Larry and I were quite saddened to hear the news. Larry was particularly perturbed by his passing, as his favorite boomerangs are all Blue Star models. According to his profile on the Blue Star website, Behrens was captain of the German Boomerang World Cup team and was a record holder for long distance throwing. Of course, I know him best as "the guy who makes those paxolin and G12 boomerangs."
I started out this part of my post by trying to recall when I first heard tales of the Blue Star brand. As it turns out, my memory of this is quite poor. Fortunately, Manny and I both use G-chat, and enough of our idle chatter was recorded for me to piece together part of the story. In late 2010, at what was arguably the height of our initial obsession with boomerangs, we were both still customers exclusively of The Boomerang Man and boomerangs.com. By this time, we had picked up the majority of the remaining available models of Colorado brand boomerangs and were trying models from other brands that they carried.
Anyway, at the time, boomerangs.com's listings for the Blue Star line included several iterations of the Windeater with some glowing praise for the line. (Manny's Windeater 1 shown below.)
As I recall, we had several intense discussions attempting to justify the relatively high cost of one of these boomerangs. (We were accustomed to picking up boomerangs for $20 to $30 instead of $50 to $60.) Ultimately, we made the claim that we needed to fill out our higher-wind, medium-range boomerangs with some alternatives. We went back and forth about these "paxolin" and "G12" boomerangs, wondering how these exotic materials would perform.
Manny was the first to bite the bullet, making several attempts to procure a Windeater 2...but eventually winding up with the aforementioned Windeater 1. There was some...dissatisfaction with this boomerang, unfortunately. (It tends to return fast, easily scaring me into hurling myself to the deck whenever it comes near.) We simply chalked this up to the fact that it was not the Windeater 2 that had been the intended acquisition at the start of his adventure.
Nevertheless, the existence of the Blue Star brand was now planted in our mind. About a month went by before one of us happened to expand our search for new boomerangs to other vendors--namely, the Blue Star website itself and Ted Bailey's Flight-Toys.com. As we paged through their catalogs, we became enthralled by a new dream of having long-range sport boomerangs, soaring majestically over the sand against a backdrop of shimmering gold at sunset. With Manny still recovering from his spending spree, I decided to pick up one representative boomerang for us to try. I selected the Marathon Mini in paxolin for this task. As I recall, it came down to a combination of descriptions recommending it for windy conditions and ranges in the 50- to 60-meter regime.
The Marathon Mini was initially a somewhat temperamental boomerang for me, but after sitting idle in my bag for a couple weeks, it took on a new character as an excellent, far-ranging sport boomerang. Now I am consistently pleased with its range and hover on return. (I suppose it might have serendipitously warped its way into great performance.) It was about this time that I met Charles and Larry, who were then able to demonstrate what great-returning Windeaters and Marathon Minis look like. In addition, Larry allowed me to try his G12 Sussex Hook.
From then on, I was hooked (pun now intended, but not originally). I picked up several Blue Star 'rangs in the year since then and have not regretted it in the least. (Okay, there was that one time that Manny and I lost a couple of them to the briny depths...but I was disappointed in myself rather than in the boomerang.)
Volker Behrens' boomerangs are a thrill to throw and catch, and I consider myself lucky to have become interested in boomerangs at a time when he was still producing them. Indeed, I cannot ignore how he continues even now to define my life, even indirectly, by having brought me into contact with others who enjoy his designs, which have served as a springboard for me to delve further into this wonderful world of boomerangs.
"Putting my spin on boomerangs..."
A grim bit of news has been making its way through the boomerang community over the last week. Volker Behrens, the man behind the Blue Star line of boomerangs, recently passed away. I first saw mention of it in a notice from Ted Bailey regarding upcoming changes to his catalog. Further discussion quickly followed in the Boomerang_Talk Yahoo! group (topic starting with message #10371). I thought I would post this to the blog in case any of our readers have not yet heard.
Manny, Charles, Larry and I were quite saddened to hear the news. Larry was particularly perturbed by his passing, as his favorite boomerangs are all Blue Star models. According to his profile on the Blue Star website, Behrens was captain of the German Boomerang World Cup team and was a record holder for long distance throwing. Of course, I know him best as "the guy who makes those paxolin and G12 boomerangs."
I started out this part of my post by trying to recall when I first heard tales of the Blue Star brand. As it turns out, my memory of this is quite poor. Fortunately, Manny and I both use G-chat, and enough of our idle chatter was recorded for me to piece together part of the story. In late 2010, at what was arguably the height of our initial obsession with boomerangs, we were both still customers exclusively of The Boomerang Man and boomerangs.com. By this time, we had picked up the majority of the remaining available models of Colorado brand boomerangs and were trying models from other brands that they carried.
Anyway, at the time, boomerangs.com's listings for the Blue Star line included several iterations of the Windeater with some glowing praise for the line. (Manny's Windeater 1 shown below.)
 |
| From Rangs |
As I recall, we had several intense discussions attempting to justify the relatively high cost of one of these boomerangs. (We were accustomed to picking up boomerangs for $20 to $30 instead of $50 to $60.) Ultimately, we made the claim that we needed to fill out our higher-wind, medium-range boomerangs with some alternatives. We went back and forth about these "paxolin" and "G12" boomerangs, wondering how these exotic materials would perform.
Manny was the first to bite the bullet, making several attempts to procure a Windeater 2...but eventually winding up with the aforementioned Windeater 1. There was some...dissatisfaction with this boomerang, unfortunately. (It tends to return fast, easily scaring me into hurling myself to the deck whenever it comes near.) We simply chalked this up to the fact that it was not the Windeater 2 that had been the intended acquisition at the start of his adventure.
Nevertheless, the existence of the Blue Star brand was now planted in our mind. About a month went by before one of us happened to expand our search for new boomerangs to other vendors--namely, the Blue Star website itself and Ted Bailey's Flight-Toys.com. As we paged through their catalogs, we became enthralled by a new dream of having long-range sport boomerangs, soaring majestically over the sand against a backdrop of shimmering gold at sunset. With Manny still recovering from his spending spree, I decided to pick up one representative boomerang for us to try. I selected the Marathon Mini in paxolin for this task. As I recall, it came down to a combination of descriptions recommending it for windy conditions and ranges in the 50- to 60-meter regime.
 |
| From phnxhawk's Boomerang Collection |
The Marathon Mini was initially a somewhat temperamental boomerang for me, but after sitting idle in my bag for a couple weeks, it took on a new character as an excellent, far-ranging sport boomerang. Now I am consistently pleased with its range and hover on return. (I suppose it might have serendipitously warped its way into great performance.) It was about this time that I met Charles and Larry, who were then able to demonstrate what great-returning Windeaters and Marathon Minis look like. In addition, Larry allowed me to try his G12 Sussex Hook.
 |
| From phnxhawk's Boomerang Collection |
From then on, I was hooked (pun now intended, but not originally). I picked up several Blue Star 'rangs in the year since then and have not regretted it in the least. (Okay, there was that one time that Manny and I lost a couple of them to the briny depths...but I was disappointed in myself rather than in the boomerang.)
Volker Behrens' boomerangs are a thrill to throw and catch, and I consider myself lucky to have become interested in boomerangs at a time when he was still producing them. Indeed, I cannot ignore how he continues even now to define my life, even indirectly, by having brought me into contact with others who enjoy his designs, which have served as a springboard for me to delve further into this wonderful world of boomerangs.
"Putting my spin on boomerangs..."
Volker will be missed. A lovely man.
ReplyDelete"serendipitously warped its way into great performance" - love it!