I just got back into RC after a long layoff.... like 15-20 years and was quite happy to see all the airplanes being offered as ARFs. I've been building from plans, drew my own plans, built from scratch, designed my own, built for sale, whatever you want to call it, since the '60s..... and first thing I did was pick up a beautiful little ARF. And it was excellent.

Then I bought a Phoenix Sukhoi ARF. And it had some bad stuff in it. But because of my experience, I caught all but the hidden lead weight trick. I fixed everything I felt was wrong and the "build" didn't take but maybe an hour longer than it would have without the fixes. And the sucker flies really good. Very nice. Excellent value for my money. Probably is a fair value for most short timers, new to flying models, average flyer of today.

Then I bought a World Models .46 Ultimate and that beauty is VERY VERY well designed and built. It's only got one thing I though was a problem but the mfg construction looks excellent. That one thing is something that would be very obvious to an experienced biplane builder. But then I found out about the Raidentech Ultimate that is about $30 cheaper. Everything about the Raidentech points to it being either an early version built for WM and rejected by them, or maybe it's WM's seconds, or maybe it's just a cheaper run off the line that also mfg's for WM. Whatever it is, it turns out to not have included a couple of decent items. For example, it doesn't come with the VERY useful wing incidence template/supports. And just a day or so ago, while discussing how much of a value the Raidentech Ultimate was, I noticed that the design of the center, top wing struts was significantly different than the WM struts. And nothing about the Raidentech design was an improvement. Matter of fact, everything about them was a big negative. What did turn on a light for me was that most people with decent experience would have probably looked hard at that Raidentech while sticking it together and if they didn't fix the problem while sticking it together, would have been watching for problems from it on the first flights.

And I've helped guys at the field with their new ARFs. One of them got a $200+ beauty that came without instructions of any sort. Cost savings? or poor quality control? Neither is really acceptable in today's world.

So the Raidentech/World Models Ultimate makes a point about todays ARFs.

My opinion is that every ARF I've stuck together so far has had a flaw that really would not have been there had the mfgs actually been experienced builder/flyers. And one of them had multiple flaws. Most of the flaws weren't close to being fatal flaws, but a couple probably would cause considerable grief to people who would probably think it was their flying that was at fault.

I'd say that the issue brought up by this thread is one I've noticed and have been somewhat amazed at. It's amazing that the design and construction is so top notch and that there are dead stupid mistakes, and those are screw ups in areas that're outside the design/construction part of the process. They're things that only show up when you fly the suckers! Don't they test fly what they mfg?