Ok, I live is Sweden where the hobby isn't very big. It's a (very)small market (the people you see in the only RC-magazine are the same every month). That's why I have to pay about 300 USD for a Sig SE ARF. Or 1500 USD for a Futaba 9z. 190 USD for a OS 46 FX. I could go on forever. We also have about 1-2 months of summer. The rest is cold as the grave. You don't hear me *****ing about it. I live in a cramped expensive apartment and have no place/time to build. I'm pretty sure wouldn't do it if I had to. I probably even wouldn't have started flying. So ARFs are a blessing to me. It gets me flying.

So the cheap arf that you paid like 100 bucks for ís bouit out of toothpicks by a underpaid slave-worker. What do you expect?! The long debate over labourcost is pretty accurate, I think. If you pay someone close to nothing and demand him/her to manufacture something in no-time you get poor quality. Simple as that. I'm not saying cheap stuff isn't crap. I'm just saying I KNOW it is bad. I think you yanks should start appreciate what you've got instead of just complaining. You've got reasonable prices, often good climate and you get new stuff first.

Last but not least I would just like to comment on the post comparing cars and airplane-models. Why should I pay for something that isn't even ready built? It's just like with cars. Someone will probably reply that you shouldn't compare apples and oranges but why not? More often than not you won't have to put 100s of hours into building something that you have paid big bucks for. Well, enough said for this time.