ORIGINAL: MANFRED
Yeah, I love these guys that buy pre-fab Turbine jets with completely molded fuses and foam core wings and call that a kit! How many ''built up'' jet airframes have you seen competing on the circuit? Many of the BVMs or Yellows and such are one step away from being ARFs aren't they?
If it was not for Arfs and electrics this hobby might have become extinct by now!
Well,
I would respectfully disagree with much of that. I'm guessing from what you wrote that you probably haven't built a Y/A jet kit. If you have, I'd love to see pics.
Some of us actually think that the influx of the ARF thing has hurt as much as helped. I can tell you that people might be coming into the hobby at higher numbers (maybe) but they are getting out of the hobby just as quickly. Also, a huge portion of the hobby has been exported. When I first got into the hobby back in 1990, there were not only many American kit manufacturers, but several LHS's in San Diego. Now, most of them are out of business, and most of the hobby materials are made overseas. There are good and bad things about this, but the first warbird rally I attended back in '93 had NO ARF's there except for after hours. They were all kit-built if not scratch-built. That made it worth driving out of state. If you're the type to go to a warbird rally with your Hobby People brand plane, then more power to you. If you think that's the salvation of our hobby, then I just chalk it up to there's room in this world for more than one point of view. I surely don't want to open my AMA mag to read about a warbird rally and see pics of a bunch of crap that the proud winner simply had to bolt his engine to and screw his control-horn screws through the top surface of the wings. They should call that an ARFbird rally.
Seriously, I was flying as a guest at the Miramar club once, and there was a guy there with a KMP or CMP (I don't remember) Spitfire ARF. It was large, like a 1/6th scale. It was a nice looking ARF to be sure, but it was very ARF-typical. It had really [unnecessarily] ugly hardware hanging all over it...and, yes, those control-horn plates I keep complaining about. It had gobs of dripped-out epoxy where the parts went together. It had a poorly-mounted engine where no regard for the spacing between the spinner backplate and the cowl was shown. It had HUGE gaps between the flying surfaces and the control surfaces. Even so, the pilot was holding court with his audience of very impressed spectators and you would have thought his firstborn son had just won an Olympic gold medal with the pride he was showing. That part wasn't what irritated me, it was the arrogant way he was offering everyone else advice on warbirds (and RC in general) whether they asked for it or not. He even noticed the absence of control horn plates on the top of my control surfaces, and asked if the safety officer of the club had signed off on me flying there. When I told him that my kit-built jet had plywood plates epoxied under the sheeting, and that the horns were epoxied-then-screwed through to the plywood...he looked like he had no idea that anyone had ever done anything other than use the kind he had. As far as he was concerned, he was an expert.
I just think that if that's the new standard, then that can't be good for the hobby.