John

The composite fuses are not difficult to repair (unless you bury at full throttle...then its over!) depending on the damage, but if you have never done it and don't have the materials in hand or can get them from a friend you can end up spending a bit of cash to get what you need and figure it all out.

Most of the composite planes sold (ZN Line, Extreme, Comp-ARF etc.) are pretty good. There are always the nit-picky that use forums to make known their dis-satisfaction, but the majority are happy and have good flying airplanes, you have to remember, wood, composite, arf or kit no airplane is perfect....if there were such an animal we would all have one. The nice thing about composite planes is you get the pretty much the same plane (good or bad) every time with little effort on your part.

Today you have more selection in a composite airframe because that is where most of the high volume manufacturers are at, there are only a handful of options in wood. Also for composite you can get them in kit form like ZN, with a composite fuse, but foam/balsa wings, stab, rudder which can take months to finish....or you can get painted in the mold all composite planes like Comp-ARF which can be built in 3 days. It could take you as long to build a ZN composite kit as it would to build one of Mikes planes.

It really depends on what skill set you have, time you have, money you have and what your shop looks like.

For the last 6 years I have had nothing but ZN kits, all built by myself. All of them have been very good and some have went more than 2000 flights on glow power (over multiple users). I would not worry about the durability of composite planes, if you treat them well, they will treat you well....same goes for wood, it will fall apart if you abuse the model.

Flying wise, its a toss up....let your fingers do the talking