I'm all for ARF's - particularly one's that at least attempt to be scale. There's one guy at the field with a whole squadron of interesting scale ARF's ranging from an Agcat to a Macchi to a Zero. I'd rather watch him fly than the guys with the Extras and 3-D models anytime -- even if he just goes around in circles.

Dave Platt, I've heard, has very serious doubts about whether serious scale RC modeling will make it into the next generations. Certainly finding a teenager as excited about building flying models as I was back in the 60 and 70's is getting harder and harder. My own son is curious about the flying and has soloed but has no interest I can see in building. Even flying seems kind of slow to his Nintendo conditioned views on entertainment -- way too much time fiddling with engines and such.

What is boils down to is a lack of interest in the aircraft themselves. No one could possibly spend the time it takes to build a scale model unless they love the plane they are modeling. I'm 40-ish and I'd imagine that anyone my age or older had lots and lots of toy airplanes as a kid. I don't think my own boys had a single airplane toy. It was all He-man and monsters. Realism is out! Also when I was growing up boys wanted to be aerospace engineers (or astronauts) when they grew up. Now that's a dull as dirt.