No one answered (to your satisfaction) because we can't figure out what you're getting at. What is the point of the question? From your AMA number, I would assume you were flying 10 years ago, before there were reasonably priced ARF's. You tell us what guys were flying then and answer your own question. Why do we care what would happen in some alternative universe if there were no ARFs? In this universe, there are ARFs. Deal with it.

Personally, I've never flown an ARF, and probably never will. I fly Spads, which, technically, I guess are scratch built planes, but in practice are so easy to build I don't think I've earned the title of "scratch builder".

I have built quite a few kits, but my guess is I'll never build another one. Been there, done that. Lined up all those little bits of balsa, sand, sand, sand, little drops of glue. Wear the organic solvent mask to avoid CA fumes. Tedious, repetitive, error-prone manual labor gets, well, tedious after a while. In the end, what do you have? A plane that cost you a lot more than the ARF version, and doesn't look as good. Since you spent over 40 hours building it, you are in serious negative territory for your labor. Then you crash, and there's 40 hours of labor down the drain. Much better, I think, to raise the standard of living of some poor 3rd world laborer, who can probably build 40 planes in the time the kit builder builds one.

The truth is that they can build planes more efficiently in a factory. They have mass production, jigs, fans for the fumes, huge work tables, and skilled labor. Why on earth would we want to go back in time? This argument that people should build kits is totally strange to me, like we should go back to riding horses instead of cars.

Don't get me wrong, a way of life is disappearing, and that is painful. But let's mourn it properly, give the folks who lived it their due, but don't disrespect them by insisting that time stops and all progress is bad.