Bob,

I've been watching this troll with a grin since it started but reading your last post, I wanted to give you an opinion as to the future of R/C. I'm not going to give you my R/C resume... but let's just say I've been flying R/C since single channel and escapments.

R/C planes will be gone as a hobby in 20 years!!!!! There, I said it....nobody else seems to want to see it but the signs are at every flying site in the country. There is no youth market to sustain the hobby in its' present form. The "I've got the plastic, you've got the plane" mentality has turned what used to be a very social, multiskilled hobby into a "what's in the new box?" hobby.

All the availability of arfs have done for the hobby is to get people into the hobby with little or no knowledge base so when the inevitable happens and they crash, they just get to buy more arfs. No glueing/cutting/designing/covering/engineering skills are needed, just enough headroom on the plastic to get another box. The other outcome of this is , "oh well, it crashed, I don't do this very well, think I'll take up traffic counting. This is making the hobby a revolving door and our present R/C magazines reflect this attitude. Easy in, easy out. I've got to stand up and applaud the arf manufacturers as they have cashed in on a market using labor so cheap, we can't even buy lunch for what they are paying their help a day. All of the arf fliers are nodding their heads right now as they KNOW they can't build a plane for the price they just paid. They know this because they can't build, the cheap price is just a bonus.. not only are they saving money, they are saving their brain and other parts of their body against overuse and those nasty razor blade cuts. One manufacturer even touts a couple of their arfs as "plug and play"....what a joke..... what do you mean the engine doesn't start itself??? and where is that computer controlled GPS managed flight control system???? In short you don't have to do anything but learn to fly before you run out of cash....if you actually turn out to really want to learn.

So, you guys that are having so much fun beating up on each other between the kit builders and the arf assemblers HAVE FUN!!! I'm going to go to the shop and work on a few projects. Something a bit more satisfying that typing....

In reflecting on the other "hobbies" such as golf, fishing, hunting, woodworking, even birdwatching....the big push in reading the magazines on these topics is LEARN HOW TO DO THIS !!!! R/C would do well to go back to this mentality. There are dues to pay in every part of life to make what you accomplish truly worthwild. The really sad thing here is that unless something changes, in 20 years, the servers that this blog is carried on will probably be gone.... just like R/C planes.....