This sure got interesting. I don't think CL is losing popularity, maybe to RC it is but not overall. I fly both RC and CL and lately it has been CL. Why? This winter I got bored after building 2 new scale RC planes. In the corner of my shop where four OLD CL planes I first started flying when I was a kid and I'm 56 now. Broken tail feathers, tore covering, etc. I mean they were in bad shape sitting and being moved from house to house. So I started working on them and getting them to look like new. Three of the planes had the old Fox 35 and one plane has a 29 I don't have any idea of who made it. No name on motor. Anyway, to make this short, they fly great. The engines after being loosened up ran as new. When as a kid I always tried to do a outside loop but never did it, crashing and gluing the plane back together. Well, I tried it again and I did it. Then I started to do figure 8's, etc. It took over 35 years to do but I got it done and was I happy. I even got a little braver and ended up doing a figure 7 1/2, burying the nose in 6" of mud. Out came the glue and I was in the air again in no time. As for the noise problem, I was concerned about that. I fly in a school yard close to houses and I know the noise must bother them so I put mufflers on all the planes. Today I received two new Fox 35's from Tower with mufflers for planes I bought on EBay. I had bought on EBay a RC profile Corsair that I converted to CL and I'm trimming that one out now. I have a three wire system, one wire to control the throttle. Now that was a challenge building.
Maybe CL is not as popular as RC but the kids who watch me fly CL won't believe that. Not anymore then when I was a kid. That's now I got started, by watching a guy in a wheelchair fly CL many, many years ago in the same school yard. Now I hope some day some young kid watches me and takes up the sport and remembers me as I remember that wheelchair guy today.