RE: Building vs Assembling [kits vs arf]
carlosponti, I see your point and I can agree with it as far as it goes, but I think there's a lot more to it than simply a matter of time and space and making a choice.
Many of the people my age (44) and older are in this hobby because we are technically oriented, hands-on creative types (and love airplanes). What I'm saying is that it is/was a hobby that naturally attracts people who enjoy making things and fiddling with them until they work the way we want them to. Many of us could have just as easily gotten into building our own hotrods and racing them on the weekends, or making our own electronics gadgets. R/C is for many a lot more than just flying.
Piloting is the conclusion of a process that involves dreaming up, designing, engineering, building, finishing, flying and then redesigning all over.
I stick to the point that I made earlier that ARFs have granted the opportunity for a whole new type of individual to become R/C pilots. So I guess I'm making another distinction: between those that want to just partake in the transmitter part of the hobby (piloting) - and I do think this is related to the PC generation - and those that probably grew up with X-acto chests and stick and tissue models (modelers).
I don't mean to come across as self-righteous or snobby about that. I just don't think it's a time issue. We find the time to do what we find to be rewarding, whether we're on the clock or not. I'm not a true programmer, but my last job title was Programmer/Developer. The Linux Sys Admins I worked with spent as much or more time at home typing commands into a terminal as I do gluing and sanding balsa.