For the Kit vs ARF question. do not be worried about building the kit - it is a really well put together kit and the building instructions (Which you can see on Pauls website) are some of the best I have seen.

The hardest and most time consuming part of building the kit is doing the covering. It is the easiest kit I have ever built and even I can put the entire airframe together in 2 days not including the covering (My building skills are pretty close to abysmal) - There are no compound curves to worry about and even my poor covering skills can get a reasonable job done of it.