Something that a lot of the ARF haters don't realize ... new people entering the hobby will spend money long before they spend time building because they hear exactly what we tell them. "It's not IF you crash but WHEN. Especially when you are just learning." The way I have seen things happen sometimes - #1. New flier buys a RTF trainer. #2. New flier buddy cords 5 times. #3 New flier crashes while flying without their buddy cord buddy. #4 New flier rebuilds trainer. #5. Repeat #3 & #4 until they finally get the hang of it. After seeing that they are capable of cutting/glueing/covering/rebuilding .... they buy a TF Giant Corsair kit. After 3 months of looking at the instructions, they buy a smaller kit to "work their way up". Either way, they are now kit builders.

I currently have 4 planes that I fly regularly. 3 are ARFS and 1 was a kit. I currently have 4 kits in my build room ... one 95% completed, one 5% completed and two still in their boxes. I also have an ARF that I have ordered and expect to receive around this time next month.

The original question is really kinda hard to answer. I think there are more people in the hobby than there was 10 years ago ... but that is kind of obvious ... and I think only a small number of those have advanced to kit building ... so the percentage of people in the hobby that build is going down. I am afraid that in 10 years there will be 2 camps in the hobby - those that build from scratch and those that buy ARFs. I fear that the kit manufactures will continue to drop kits and add ARFs .... of course companies like GreatPlanes, Hanger9, Kyosho ... have been established in the ARF world for some time. But now we see TopFlite ... even Skyshark testing the ARF waters. Companies that were built by supplying high quality kits are being forced into the ARF world just to keep up. Hopefully some of the kit suppliers will be able to make it in both worlds.