I have to confess, I am addicted to the Vmar HotRod. These things are junk, but they fly good. I am on my third one. I throw a .46 fx in mine and they go like a bat out of you know where.
I do think they are trying to improve the quality on them. On the first couple there were warps in all the control surfaces. I had to "laminate" the ailerons, rebuild the elevator and replace the rudder. A lot of the wood in the HotRod anyway is not balsa. Some kind of brittle thinly cut hardwood. It tends to shatter like glass. The hardware is junk. The clevisis have a screw threw the end instead of a pin. The threads look like they could quickly ruin a servo arm. On the last HotRod the control sufaces were straight. Granted they would not flex, but after a short time of forcefuly flexing them they actualy loosed up.
The covering looks nice out of the box, but after awhile in the sun the red starts turning to white. Especially where the engine oil gets on it.
Bottom line is if you can work out the warps, and put in some decent hardware, this is a cheap great flying plane you can have a lot of fun with.