RE: Do you consider checkbook modellers to be second class citizens?
To be honest, since the massive increase in arf's lately I see a lot less bad models than I used to. The stringbags that used to show up under the guise of personally crafted models astounded me. The majority of ARF's out there are built better than the majority of Kits that used to be built. If you want to fly and not build then go ahead, this attitude sounds like a thinly masked version of kit snobbery. Funnily enough most good builders often sold off unused planes and were quite happy with it, seems like they were pampering to the very group that a few seem to despise. Blaming poor flying skills on the ARF crowd is silly. We always had bad disciplined flyers and unskilled flyers too who built themselves or bought from other flyers, nowadays just because most newcomers get ready mades it is just easy to use that to polarise the discussion.