the title for this thread is all wrong. control line never did loose it's popularity. rather it lost the lazy or inept people that couldn't build and couldn't get the hang of flying it. there are more people flying rc because the planes while often expensive are a lot more disposable than a control line model. a well finished c/l stunter will take around 3 or 4 hundred hours ti build and the loss of that plane is much more crushing than losing an arf rc model.