It seems instant gratification is becoming the pinnacle of all activities. People can't work on their cars, their homes, value higher education, or airplanes it seems more and more. But analyze what drives one to reduce this hobby to "plug and play" may find themselves not enjoying things as fully when it requires patience and discipline. I liked working on my car, and saved a lot of money acquiring those skills. Those sparing themselves the effort to overcome obstacles might extend the practice to their other habits in life. There is a trend that has shifted many to EP, and from scratch / kit building to ARF and RTF. So is it really still a creative hobby, or playing with a flying toy?

Once upon a time, we really enjoyed ALL the facets of this hobby beyond being test pilots of delicate humming aircraft's.
Fiddling IS the hobby for some. It's rewarding to overcome obstacles and learn from them, gaining experience that reflects in thousands of forum posts here to help others, yet another part of the hobby that shouldn't die out. Finding an idle screw and it's function, is hardly reason to abandon glow engines! Today finding an old kit is another activity that precedes the building phase, where "fiddling" with building tools, glues, fillers, and covering materials to achieve a beautiful model I built myself. Fiddling with fuel, props, plugs, tuning, exhaust options, (some even get internal and modify their engines for more performance) are more rewarding practices found in this hobby than RTF EP piloting. Electric certainly is a shortcut from fiddling with glow power. As far as avoiding messy clean up chores after flying, one could fiddle with exhaust extensions or engine position to point exhaust oils away from their model and be just as clean as the delicate humming aircraft's out there.

I wouldn't want to restrict myself from the joy of watching my creation have a beautiful flight, and do so for over a decade without fatigue or failure. EP isn't all gravy, some suffer li-po fires, fry speed controllers, having bulging batteries from overcharging or worse, and pay more for their charger than I do for an engine. To each his own. Maybe if they fiddle with it, they'll get it right?