misterv

Bliksem. You're my kind of man. I'm 77 years old and have been modelling for over 60 years and seen unbeleivable changes. The greatest is the reliance on ARF models. They are great. A few years back a simple ARF of today's quality would be placed in a museum for outstanding workmanship. If not for ARF our club of 180 members would probably be 10. We would not have a field.We could not afford the facilities.However it has come with a price. Too many flyers have no idea of what makes a good model, how to trim it let alone how to build one. You see cazy quieries on forums seeking answers to the most basic of problems and I agree the comradeship is going out of the hobby.As to the cost and availability of building materials from LHS they are becoming a thing of the past. Following heart surgery a couple of years back, I took a while to recover and in that year scratch built 5 models and assembled probably a dozen ARF. I do the ARF for friends, free, I just enjoy building or assembling. I had quite a lot of bulding materials on hand but I estimated to scratch build a high quality model was 3 to 4 times the cost of a comparable ARF. They may last longer,sometimes they look better but usually the ARF were lighter and flew better.