I remember a time where I struggled to get over 30 points in trick catch in competition. For quite a long time. There were 2 reasons for this - first, I didn't practice enough and secondly I really didn't have boomerangs that were great. Singles - yes, my choice was not too bad, but doubling! No hope here. Then a few years ago, I resolved to improve my skills and spent most of my practice sessions over one summer, just focusing on Trick Catch. This made a huge difference - now I could regularly get into the 50/60's, sometimes more. But my weakness remained a good choice of doublers. Doubling boomerangs to be great, need to offer good separation. At least 5 seconds and also the 2 boomerangs need to land pretty close to each other to give the thrower a chance to run to the second boomerang
Another very desirable characteristic is strength. Of all the 6 events, trick catch I have found, is the one where breaking your favorite boomerang is almost guaranteed. This is due to the risky nature of foot catches and even more frequent I have found, the 2 boomerangs touching during the simultaneous release. Paxolin is particularly unforgiving in this respect. Its brittle and throwing hard with lots of spin, can easily cause touching boomerangs to splinter/shatter.
Recently over the past 3 or 4 seasons, I have had an excellent choice of singles TC (usually my go-to boomerang here is a 1.6mm pax spider) and for doubling I still struggled a bit - using some good Cetex doublers made by Sebastien Guiheux and a good pax pair made by Jan-Muller.
Then in 2020 I started to use an original Roger Perry 1.6mm TriMagic and for the insider, a 'thinner Chord' width 1.6mm pax of my own reduced in size - TriMagic. These were really, really good and I was keen to be able to use them in my first tournament.
Then disaster! In 2021 during a practice session - I broke these favourite pair of doublers through touching =, even worse, both broke at the same time. Every doubling pair I have ever had - has broken in this way.
So in June 2021 I resolved to mould one of my favourite doubling booms with the intention to make a tougher, less prone to shatter boomerang.
Initial tests in June/July 2021 were showing great promise and I had the opportunity to use these in competition for the first time during the German Nationals in August 2021.
They performed fantastically well. In tricky light to medium winds, I was getting some great separation and my round of 76 placed me joint first place with Guilhem. I successfully caught 1 behind back/1 under leg and also my eagle/foot. Also the 2 boomerangs seem to keep a healthy separation during the initial 2 seconds of flight - the danger zone of touching.
I have now made one insider - and also a choice of 3 outsiders. One with no internal weights, one with a little internal weight and the 3rd has a bit more internal weight. All carbon fibre and weighing around the 32 grams range.
The 'windy' version is fabulous. A range of around 55m and a separation of between 5 and 10 seconds.
These are the best doublers I have ever thrown and I'm delighted with them.
My goal is to exceed 100p in tournament which I now feel is within my capability, although still no easy feat by a long way.
Point to note - my foot catch is a bit controversial but it's one that I can successfully achieve in about 4 out of 5 attempts. I position my feet/boomerang so it lands and stops at the bend of my ankles. I do not trap the boomerang at all between my feet and therefore the chance of me snapping a boomerang on a foot catch is almost zero. I have been criticised (in a friendly way!) on this unusual method and I usually challenge the thrower to try it for themselves :)
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