Got a Cox P-40 when I was a young boy and flew that thing till it wouldn't stay together and the glue was to heavy. Flew a Super Stunter from Cox after that and loved it. Graduated to RC at fifteen then got my Private Pilots License at seventeen. CL started it all. A Lance Corporal in the USMC with a wife and new baby ended it all.
I got back into the hobby much later in life and started back with RC but yearned for the feel of the plane pulling on those lines. You can't feel the plane with RC but you sure can feel a forty sized stunt plane pull on those lines. Now don't get me wrong I like both aspects of the hobby. And actually it is like comparing apples and oranges. They're both good but "different"!!!!
To the issue....control line must get into the 21st century. Let me explain...look at the selection of RC planes. Endless!!!! ARF's, RTF's Endless!!!! Gas, Glow, Electric, and Mods Mods Mods also Endless!!!
Now look at control line.... Endless....Hardly! Don't get me wrong the recent appearance of some ARF kits is encouraging but CL is a day late and a dollar short in that area. I was really encouraged by an article I saw in an "RC magazine," of all things, about an electric pattern stunt ship that was going to be flown in world competition. By the way where are the CL magazines with lots of flashy models and innovations.
I hate to say this but there are some guys out there that held this part of the hobby back with a class system of pattern flyers who spent hundreds and hundreds of hours on ships that very few of the rest of us had the time or the skills to duplicate and those same guys held to their secrets of building and balancing and flying. Now we have what we have!
Give me a complete forty sized pattern ship powered by and electric motor, RTF, with lines and a charger and you have reached the 21st century. I will put down my TX of my micro heli, buy that product and feel the pull again! Skip