Of the planes I have owned, the only one I would discourage anyone from buying is the Aerobird Swift. Admittedly I wasn't ready for it, but it was really tough to keep in the air. I have since built and flown at least a dozen planes, and I have no desire to rebuild that thing.

While I agree with the other thread that said everyone should build at least one kit, I disagree that nobody should ever own an ARF. I have more kits than ARFs, but I think there are some very good ARFs out there, and sometimes you just want a new plane in the middle of the summer and don't want to spend the time building.

I would also disagree with the 'no SPADs' comment. I have had a lot of fun building and flying them. I have mostly drifted back to balsa, I am now building my 5th kit, but SPADs are a lot of fun to build, fly, and experiment with.

I do think that if you fly ONLY spads, then you would be surprised at how much easier it is to fly a balsa plane.

I think this thread is a great idea for pointing out models that are poorly engineered, or marketted to the wrong audience, but I wish it wouldn't turn into an anti-ARF or anti-SPAD thread. There are plenty of those already.