ORIGINAL: sacgate
I love to build so I'm probably never going to be an ARF fan however if there were some truly well built ARFs, with first rate materials, I might eventually like to own one or two.
Maybe there should be two classes of ARF. One that looks good from a distance and is cheap. The other, one that IS good and is not covered with advertising. Not everyone would shy away from the inevitable higher price.
This already exists, they are called custom built ariframes. There are lots of pattern and IMAC aircraft built by a pro builder for someone who wants a quality airframe but is unable/unwilling to build his own. The price rises with the quality, drastically. That is why you will not see truly high quality ARF's in quantity. The reason they have taken over is that they offer decent (not high, just decent) quality for the money and to many fliers the time saved is worth the money. Compared to a well built kit or scratch build, ARF's will always come out looking second best, but that doesn't matter to many people.
Builders will always be around, because creating your own flying machine from a pile of wood and a set of plans appeals to some people (me included) and that will not go away. But I am afraid that large scale kit manufacturing WILL disappear in time. The kits of the future are going to come from small niche market producers, as we see now in profile fun fly planes and other specialty market aircraft. They can run with low overhead, and are very responsive to changing market trends. The big guys can only dream of such things and will drop off because of it.
Mark