Well I haven't really gotten into the thing yet,just got the covering off and took a quick peek around but I can see a kit will probably be as fast a build as going over all the glue joints and seams being they used hot glue.some of it is pretty soft.might as well get some golden rods while it is apart.The ones they are using are pretty flimsy not stiff enough for a 48 in my book anyway.I will beef up the landing gear blocks too.Might even leave it for one of those cold winter snow storms when I am looking for something to do.So if you take into replacing all the sub standard hardware,regluing,recovering,guess what,you just built a kit so why not start with a good one to begin with