"otherwise ordinary ARF"; I think the whole point of this thread is that's exactly what most here are trying to avoid

I know there are those who would vehemently disagree with my following statement and as far as I'm concerned they tend to be narrow minded, elitist, and have no practical concept of "ARF bashing" or the degree of skill and scratch building experience it takes:
At some point, and I believe many have passed that point here, an ARF ceases to be an ARF and becomes an entirely unique genre of building(yes, building); It's gone far beyond mere assembly, has numerous components of Kit building and even more of scratch building along with re-engineering/designing. The end results become the "kit bashes" that we all take great pride in- and rightfully so. There are many examples in this thread of scale fidelity and appearance that put scores of kit and scratch builts to shame and very likely (the bash's) have a LOT more hours devoted to them in research and building.

Keep up the wonderful work guys, you are all truely inspiring!!! It really does take a different type of builder to do this stuff and make it look easy