ORIGINAL: grimmy55
why not take up the challenge and scratch build ,,buy a plan and start from the wings/fuselage up then you are really building to finish of cover in silk and paint ,that way you can really say you build ,none of this getting it right first time with a kit
Back in the day we didn't buy plans and call it scratch building, we got out or paper and pencils then used rulers or the good old vemco drafting machine to design our planes. As magazines started running more and more aiticles on different builds we were able to order plans and life got simpler. Plans building is nothing more then using the plans and cutting your own kit. Most of my own planes today are still plans built but I really like it when I can find a nice kit to build, just makes life that much easier. It would be worth your time to go look in the plans section of RC Modeler's plans department, Model Airplane News Plans and even the AMA web site has plans. Anyone that can build a kit can build from plans, nothing hard about it plus you can take your plans to Kinko's and have them printed out to most any size you would like. When you buy magazine plans they also come with the articles that showed you how it was built, not instructions but more of a guide. Wood is cheap too, look up Lone Star Balsa and check them out. Tools that make plans building easy are the scroll saw and a sander, not a must have but a big help.