Being how we are still in the beginners forum this may help others understand a little about kit building. You can't compare an ARF to a kit in any way and they don't provide you with any real building skills, the term is assembled a few ARFs, not building, some builders really get upset when people use the term build when speaking of an ARF, I'm not one of them.
Three are three main types of builders, Scratch building is when you start with a blank sheet of paper and design and draw your own plans for a plane, I did that as a kid but it's a lot of work, these days you have a CAD program in a puter and can do it a lot better then I ever did.
Then there are plan builders like myself, we just buy plans for a plane and then cut our own kit from them, not very hard and we can make all the changes we want in the build.
Then there is the kit builder who buys the kit with all the wood parts pre-cut, kits come with most the hardware too and even has pre-bent wires, plans and instructions.
I have never built the Elder but it's a cool looking plane, I also haven't pulled up any build thread so don't know what is involved. What I see is the stick built part of the fuse fuse, it's very old school and may present some problems for a new builder?
Anyone with some talent at wood working should be able to build most kits though, some types are just a bit harder.
When I instruct a student in kit building I use the 4* 60 from SIG, it's an easy build and a big enough plane for most people.
Another good choice is any of the Fun Fly type of planes like the Tower Up-Roar.
First thing you should do now is go into the kit building forum and pull up an Elder build and follow it to see if it is a good kit for you. Not ever building one I really wouldn't know.
Most any of the kits from Tower or SIG are made to be easy builds, good instructions and they have photos of each stage of the build. You do need to think things through though before you glue but building isn't all that hard. I built my first plane at 8 years old by myself in 1956 and it flew very well, just didn't look as good as the planes the big guys built but I learned. It's a lot easier today so go for it. Just look up the build first and make sure you will be able to finish your first kit.
There is more then enough help in the building forum, like way too much.
For foam planes I got one of the auto feed cutters that goirish makes, Gene really makes a nice one. It really makes a nice wing with full airfoils. There are people on line that sell templates so you can make a foam plane with full shapes to the plane so it doesn't look like a slab foamie, I want to try to cut and build one this year, something completely different that I have never done.
Gene