Advertising is there to SELL more so than to INFORM. This applies to virtually everything, not just RC products. Anybody here believes Dynaflite's claim that their giant scale kits "builds fast and easy like a .40 size kit"?

Making mods to ARFs is easy to do, but not at all necessary. Look at the thousands of .40 trainer ARFs sold every year. The overwhelming majority of them did their job training RC newbies just fine - safely and without mods. They are a great tool to help the budding RC novice get over the daunting task of first flights with minimum hassle. Once they solo, then they can tackle other challenges of this great hobby.

The handful of nitpicking opinionated ARF haters may try to downplay the quality of ARFs today, but the real evidence is quite the contrary. If ARFs are really as terrible as you all make them out to be, then they would not be loved by the great majority of RCers, sell in record numbers and continue to grow exponentially as they have.