I did ICDF for roughly 10 years and something over 825 flights.  I'll never go back.  8 aircraft, roughly 9 engines (includes 2 or more rebuilt into one good one), many pipes & o-rings, rods, pistons, cranks, many, many dozens of plugs, etc.  Mostly Ramtec & Dynamax with OS's with some BVM fan and .91's.  Yes, you can do way better than this with some effort and expense, but then, that's my experience.

I switched to turbine in 2002 and the difference was dramatic.  Almost overnight, I went to an average of 50 to 60 flights a month (I was retired) but lately I've been slowing down on that.  The biggie was that I went from 10-20 hours of maintenence per flight hour on the ICDF to nearly zero on the turbine and now have something like 4500+ flight in the last 9 years.

I'm just back this morning from flying my Tam's TJ-80 powered Habu 32  EDF.  On 6S it's about 125-130 mph for 5 minutes on 5000mah and on 8S it's just under 4 minutes at 140-150mph on 4000mah.  It flys very much like the BVM Bandit series.  No hassle, put battery in & fly.  Repeat.  Charge batteries. Next day, repeat.  Over 200 flights, way fun and I'm wondering if I prefer it to the turbine stuff.

If I had had the Habu during my ICDF days, I would have sold all the ICDF stuff immediately.

Used to see the occasional ICDF at the meets up to about 2 years ago.  No more.  Got to like it like Gene above but not many do.