Yeah if you love to build by all means build!! Believe me I admire a kit built plane much more than and ARF any day. But I look at the building portion and the flying portion as kind of seperate hobbies. I don't enjoy building all that much, I think mostly because I don't have all the fancy tools to do the job right. I've built a few kits, a goldberg ultimate, and an US 1000, but for the most part I don't enjoy building because I don't have the time. For me it IS about saving money, I would rather buy two different ARF's for the $$ it would take me to build one kit. But I enjoy the flying part of the hobby much more than the building portion.

I also benifit from a year round flying season, so there is no winter down time for me. If I did have a winter where I couldn't fly I probably would spend that time building and would invest in the tools to do it right. I'm sure I would enjoy it much more then.