Originally Posted by
Truckracer
I'm pretty much to the point of not building much anymore now. Costs are incredibly hign, especially for paint and covering supplies. Wood is a close second. Unless I just have to have something that can't be had in any form as an ARF, I simply can't justify building. Add to that the lack of some tools and less shop space than I had before retirement, building can sometimes be a frustration rather than enjoyment. But overall I enjoy the building experience and the pride that usually comes with it. You can't put a price on that. At least thats the rational I use to get myself back to the building board.
These days though, tracking down all the necessary parts and pieces can be another matter.
Back to this thread ....... I sure wish I could have my OLD Super Monokote available once again. A close second would be having the old K&B SuperPoxy come back though KlassKote is pretty darn good.
Me too, though I have been a 'builder' for many years.
In the UK it's not so much poor supply though good paints are becoming harder to find. The only decent ones available in the UK are Oracover 2 part epoxy paints which are both expensive and often many colors have to be specially ordered from Germany. This usually takes only a few days to arrive but is still a nuisance. But of course demand is low, as you say.
It's the price of everything - an ARTF is much lower cost. The actual price doesn't matter too much to me but 'value' does.
But so many ARTFs are poorly made and poorly finished. (Though Great Planes ones are usually good.) And 'on principle' I don't think we should have to 'improve' an ARTF, no more than we expect to have to 'improve' a new car we buy. On occasions I have been tempted to invoke the UK 'Sale of Goods Act' to recover both my money and the price of my time I have spent to make some of the ARTFs safely flyable. Also many of the 'scale' ones are grossly inaccurate.
Personally I still build most myself despite the higher cost. The only ARTFs I buy are scale (only) planes that I quite like, but don't like enough to build (and perhaps draw up) myself. I don't buy non-scale ARTFs at all as I like designing my own non-scale models, particularly F3A ones..