Nobody mentioned the single biggest flaw with ARF's.....

NO PLANS

Since you have no plans you also have no easy way of making parts to repair an ARF.

This was the first thing that struck me after I got back into the hobby last year, after a 12 year break. I bought 2 ARF's and crashed the second one. After the crash I came to the inescapable conclusion that if I had a set of plans for the airplane I could have repaired it and had it back in the air in a couple of weeks worth of evenings.

Of course this pushed me back into the realm of kits and now I actually prefer to build.

I also really LOVE it when I go to the field and pull my models out of the truck and nobody else has one like them. In fact many of the "ARF'ers" usually have no idea what, or where, many of my airplanes came from since they don't see them on the shelf in a big pretty box at the LHS. (I like Sig's older kits like the Kougar, Kadet and Kavalier)

It's a shame really because todays kits really aren't that hard to build, compared to the kits of 20 years ago. Unfortunately when you talk to many new modellers that are assembling and flying ARF's they have the same ideas and misconceptions that many did back in the days before ARF's, that kits are just to hard to build and simply took to much time and required "black art" skills to finish. Nothing could be further from the truth, especially with todays lazer cut kits and a couple of bottles of CA glue in hand. In fact the worst part about building for most beginners, I have seen, is the process of covering. They want their new pride and joy to look perfect and usually get frustrated with their less than perfect first time results.

20 years ago "non-builder" types usually paid someone to build and finish out their models for them. Today we pay the chinese to do it for us rather than another club member.

I have found though that while ARF's are a great way to get started in the hobby today, most who get truly bitten by the R/C bug will eventually move over and give kits a try and many will stick with them once they do.

Either way this a great hobby with a lot of really great people in it and it matters not if your a builder or and ARF'er since we all have a great time doing what we do.