Hey thanks for all the great replies guys!

Money is a big concern for me and sure enough ARF's are by far cheaper when you figure in all the hardware, building materials not included in the kit, and misc that it takes to finish up a kit.

After reading your replies and poking around on the internet it looks like the most I could conceivably afford, (and that's after saving all my pennies for quite a while and selling off all the little stuff), is probably a 50cc class bird.

I'm finishing up a Stinger 120 that I've built to be IMAA legal with a converted a 31cc Ryobi weedwacker engine to power it. The engine is pretty powerful for a conversion swinging an 18-8 8000rpm. I caught the kit on sale for $100 on Tower's website and did the engine conversion myself which kept the powerplant cost to around $140. I recently added up what it's cost me to buy all the things not included in the kit that are needed to complete the plane and it would have been cheaper by at least $100 to buy the ARF Stinger 120!! It was a valuable learning experience building it from scratch though, so I don't regret it.

Anyway what this all boils down to is that I already have a large scale 80" sport plane to play around with. I've already become a decent 3D pilot flying the smaller stuff so I don't really want another sport plane. When I shell out all that hard earned for a 50cc 80+ inch scale ship I want it to be able to do anything. 3D, pattern, precision aerobatics etc...

So what do you guys think? In that class of plane what is the least expensive plane/engine setup (not cheapest) that will do anything the pilot can do?

Thanks again for all the input.

Jim