You pay for what you get. I have built from kits, scratch built from plans and assembled ARFs. All kits are not alike in quality. Scratch building becomes very expensive. ARFs are manufactured in good, better and best varities. The bottom line is building never went away only the quanity and quality has.

Steve,

This was a post which I am sure touched many hearts and minds. I also went wayword and started with those ARF's. I have three in my hangar and I am left with a strong feeling that I am missing something. This prompted me to go back and build. I just finished a Lanier Stinger 40 last week and as of this morining I have the tail and wings completed on my Giles 202.

Satisfaction, need to create is what it is all about. I hope I can keep buying kits as long as I am able to construct.

The greatest sense of satisfaction I ever had out of an ARF was when I tore down a Royal 40L, backed up the soft ply firewall with 3/16" birch ply, stripped the contact paper covering off, added ply reinforcements to the landing gear blocks, increased the rudder, elevator, aileron areas by 40 to 50%, glued the wing ribs to the spars and planking (including having to add filler strips to correct too wide slots), added a turtle deck with canopy, faired in the nose to match the spinner with a removeable nose block, got rid of the soft lg wire, and re-covered with good old American Monocoat. Had a faster, more manuverable aircraft, even though I added almost 6 ounces of weight.
Never overcame the fact that the two wing panels had two different airfoils, though. Had a fair amount of roll coupling with any control input. After fewer than 30 flights, found out the hard way I should have replaced the plastic control horns with good Dubro parts.

I'm kind of reminded how so many local drug stores, craft shops, and variety stores carried and sold huge amounts of plastic kits. Then came the easy to assemble snap together plastic kits. Now, where these stores used to have entire racks of models, now they might have only a couple shelves, or nothing at all.

I'm just wishing that I could get away from all the overtime I'm working and get back to building, kits and plans, and an occassional scratch build and only once in a while getting a distinctive ARF that strikes my fancy.

I notice there is still a lot of kit and scratch building going on in my area, especially amoung the large scale afficianados, even among the under 40 as with the over 50 group. Just that more of the entry level people are going with the ARFs. A few of those who stay in the sport for more than a couple of years seem to grow into building.

The drop-off in building is just another symptom of the National illness that over the last 20 or so years has taken us from respecting real work to considering only "Virtual" or "Mental/Supervisory/executive" work to have value, and anybody who gets his/her hands dirty or works up a sweat in anyplace but an excersize program as being somehow subhuman. When my wife came to this country 36 years ago, she was impressed with how much respect even manual labor got in this country. She doesn't see as much of it anymore. Work and working people are now starting to have the same treatment it got in her home country.

Gee, I was just about to log off and go to lunch, when I just browsed back a page and notice a thread that reminded me of something. Someone asked about the possibility of most builders not actually being very involved with these websites. Which suggests they actually don't get counted very much.

Out of the 143 members of my R/C club, 40 members of the local CL club, and 30 some members of a local Flying Aces associated FF club, probably 20, myself included, admit to spending much time on the internet cruising these sites. In fact, I am sometimes their only source of some of the things going on between FAA and AMA.

Got me thinking. I get about 6 MA magazines and 2 or 3 Model Railroad magazines, as well as maybe 2 to 5 Woodworking magazines a month, and an occasional Popular Mechanics and Popular Science. I spend maybe 6 hours a month scanning the articles to spend maybe 3 hours worth of reading information I can or may be able to use. I spend maybe 8 or 9 hours a week on the web, about 10 sites, have some fun taking part in some of these on-line discussions, but may only spend an hour or so out of all that time getting the same kind and relative amount of information.

Maybe I have time for building because I am fortunate to usually only require between 5.5 and 6.5 hours of sleep a day, some of which comes from the meetings for meetings sake we get too much of.

I wonder if there are really fewer builders or just a whole lot more buy & fliers. There has always been somewhat of a market for people who build for the enjoyment and could sell their efforts to someone who would rather just fly. I suspect there wasn't really a lot of money in it, but cheap labor in the global economy has made for a more lucrative market.

It's also interesting to note the DIY craze that fuels the Home Depots and Lowes behemoths. Maybe at some point it will become "stylish" to build your own model too.

I do believe that the kit market is on the decline. I started this hobby when I was 11 yrs old
and learned on a ARF Ugly Stik. Ever since then I have built my planes from kits and attempted
a scratch built.

I just got back into this hobby after being out 9 years (now 24) and built my first plane (this time
around) from a kit and working on my 2nd and 3rd. I have not done ARF's at all but will do this
in a warbird or something similar just to get them up quick. Nothing wrong with ARF's but kits
are much more entertaining to me.

Less than 1/4 of the ARFs or ARCs I've had were purchased from a store. The rest were partially completed or fully completed models, kits or scratch, someone else started building and either lost interest in, wanted to make room for other models, or which I bought from estate sales. And then there were a couple I bought from young kids getting ready for college and needing money. These were usually the best constructed and best flying of the ARFs. Most of the commercial ARFs had some flaws.

friends don't let friends buy ARFs!!

I've built 2 ARF's (Avistar and Graduate), and 2 kits (Pete & Poke and Dreamer). I had the most fun building the Dreamer. It made me think, and problem solve. The Avistar (the first ARF) was a great experience to a person who had never built with wood (I'm a plastic modeler), but I have to say, I've been bitten by the building bug and I'm loving every minute I can get to do it. I'm in the process of starting my first scratch build made from plans I got from AMA. I hope to have something different at the field next year for opening day. When I'm done, I'll post pictures.

The building isn't gone, just need to show it to the youngsters (I'm 42 BTW). Happy flying!

Don

The last couple area Mall shows our local clubs put on, we got lots of attention by having kits being built during the shows, and also having a couple partially built planes where viewers could see what the planes were like under the covering. Brought in a lot of new members, at least for a year or two.

I am getting back into this hobby after a while away and bought an arf to kinda get up and running,well I always built and after taking the covering off this thing because it would not stay down(for the price I figured hey I will just recover it hahaha) there were broken formers controls rod housings not glued to formers parts not even close together for glue to hold and not even glue in places.Please forgive me for straying from building but I am back and will be building from now on.Time to start my telemaster or venture or 4*60. let the balsa dust begin

Wow! and here I'd heard people swear up and down that today's ARFs don't have those problems anymore. Was there enough repair work to let you claim you built a lot of that plane?

I have one ARF. I have two kits under my belt. Super Sportster 60 (now discontinued *#&@^&$, oh that's another thread) and a Yak-3 from Redstar RC. I have built 3 planes from scratch (a SS 20 scaled down from my SS 60 planes, and two trainers though one was a little heavy and has been retired).

The ARF that I have is a GP Uproar 40 that was a gift. I will tell you that this plane can fly. So much so that I am trying to fly it into the ground. But having said that, I don't think that I will buy another (except for a $69 trainer from V-mar if need, I have a 6 year old that is learning). I personnally think that ARFs a great, they offer a product to a lot of people who love to fly but not build. The only problem I have is with manufactures of kits. Many of these guy's are dropping their kits and offering more and more ARFs. I am assuming that they get more margin off of these. The real issue that I think has most of us kit builders concerned with is ARF at the expense of Kits. That is what I see happening, fewer and fewer kits of the planes we love only to have them be available as ARFs only.

Remember, building is a hobby, flying is a sport. But I will tell you, at least at my field, even a not so pretty kit plane will glean a lot more admeration from the club than the prettiest ARF that some one just assembled.

Build a plane, make it unique, make it yours and then show it off to everyone you can!

Well I haven't really gotten into the thing yet,just got the covering off and took a quick peek around but I can see a kit will probably be as fast a build as going over all the glue joints and seams being they used hot glue.some of it is pretty soft.might as well get some golden rods while it is apart.The ones they are using are pretty flimsy not stiff enough for a 48 in my book anyway.I will beef up the landing gear blocks too.Might even leave it for one of those cold winter snow storms when I am looking for something to do.So if you take into replacing all the sub standard hardware,regluing,recovering,guess what,you just built a kit so why not start with a good one to begin with

Oh yes I forgot to mention the plane is the Skyraider Marc I

I built my trainer from a kit ,a Balsa USA Stick 40. Building sure helped with repairing and knowing how to set it up. After building some SPADS and ARF's I built a Mountain Models Tantrum. This winter I have a Skybolt for me and a Kadet for my 6 year old. A bunch of guys in our club have been building Ryan's Rebels so that will be my first scratch build attempt. After seeing my Father in law spend so much time putting together a Vector Flight Extra and still end up with an overweight cheap looking plane it makes kits look better all the time.

I used to scratch build my own CL models when I was 12. My father taught me as he was very skilled with his hands. When I was 15, I built my first kit. A kit that never flew due to lack of money to purchase the radio. I came back to this hobby two years ago (I was 42 then). I built my trainer, a GP PT-40. I know I paid as twice as any RTF or ARF trainer in the market, but the pleasure of flying my own and unique trainer was priceless. I have built three more kits after my trainer.

I only have one ARF that I bought from a co-worker. It was a good deal that could not pass. However, I spent more than 20 hours fixing the ARF at many weak points that craked at the first landing. Now the ARF is as solid as any other of my kits.

I have three more kits to build for this winter. But as many other, I am seeing less and less kits available in the market. It worries me a lot. To me, more than half of the pleasure is in the building process. Specially when one time, I took me four hours to do a lateral balance in one of my planes. I know, I exagerated. But the test was that the plane was stand still for more than 30 mins in perfect level. Then the covering, etc.

I hope we can continue seeing kits. I have also thought about accumulating some kits for future building.

NO ARF's in my hangar........ love building to much for that!

Wim

No arfs in my shop either. I just can't get any satisfaction out of something that someone else "threw together and covered with a plastic bag". Why can't the manufacturers offer planes in arf form for the "flyers" and kit form for the "Modelers"? Seems to me it's just a matter of diverting the parts to a packing line instead of to the ladies and children on the build line.

Take a look at R/C Scale Builder.com. There are lots of kit options still out there and lots of "Modelers".

I've never seen an ARF scale model that even comes close to most of the kit or scratch built models I've seen. No "Scale" ARF currently available would deserve a place on the displays at Toledo. Many of these "Scale" ARFs, except MAYBE some of the ARFs being built by Top Flight and Goldberg from their kits, are more on the order of Stand Way Off Scale. Some of them are even Cartoon or Caricature scale. Then theres some so-called Scale ARFsthat seem to fall into the category of "The designer never saw the real thing, or bothered to use any scale three views or other documentation.
Properly designed and built ARFs and ARCs do have a place in our Hobby/Sport. They bring in a lot of people every year. The quality issues and construction weaknesses seem to turn off a lot of the new people after a short time as well. Just as it seems do the quick fly underpowered electric powered plastic "RC model airplanes" that show up on net sources and toy store/discount house shelves.
There's a lot more quality ARFs on the market than there were 25 or 30 years ago. Some of the old poorly built trash is still out there, too.
And ARFs are not the latest and greatest, either. There were cheap wire frame silk covered rubber powered Free Flight models on the market before WW2. Their problems were usually the same as the worst of today's ARFs, too. My first powered CL plane was a piece of plastic with an engine that only ran ionce, several years after I got the plane as a Christmas present.

Let me start by saying friends don't let friends buy ARFs! From what my son trells me in Germany kit building is a lot more popular or appears to be than in the USA and Canada. When I was a kid I built evry plane I ever flew even designed a few. Some weren't too pretty but they were my handy work. I got out of R/C for about 20 years and now I'm back into it with my youngest son who is now 15. We built a SIG Kadet LT 40 to train him and for me to brush up on. Our next project has already been purchased a SIG 1/5 th scale J 3 Cub with an old Saito .80 in it. My 3rd plane is going to be a Ryan SC-W I have tinkered with my own design but I have heard of a set of plans designed by Dick Katz from a plan service. Has anyone in this forum seen any of his designs. It seems to me if your an ARF flyer and you exprement with alternative landing sites such as a tall etc. you don't have a clue on how to fix it so you quit or buy another. If you are a builder you probably already have the fix laid out in your mind before you get loaded back up to go home. (And if you're lucky the ARF pilot that quits offers you a great deal!.

Mike

I'm relatively new to the sport but have managed to amass about 12 planes, half of them are kits and half ARFs. While a number of us may be experimenting with ARFs, surely there's room for both in the hobby. The manufacturers will hopefully keep providing a variety of kits available.

There are 2 types of people in this sport: Flyers amd Builders. I am a builder but how can you resist buying the Miss America P51 ARF?

I don't fear the ARF's as much as I fear Electrics! Every hobby magazine is devoting more and more space to electrics.

God, how I love the smell of burnt fuel in the morning [8D]!!!

I haven't read the entire thread but it seems most of the posts are in favor of kits. Hmmmm... Well, if somebody had posted these thoughts in the ARF section there would be entirely different reactions. I love flying in general and come from a background of growing up around a dad that built mostly everything from scratch. He would spend countless hours building trains, planes, ships, submarines. He built a 4 1/2 ft. WW2 submarine that was remote control and could dive under water. I remember as a kid building lots of car models and building some airplane kits with my dad. My dad passed away a couple years and I was the one in the family fortunate enough to inherit most of the things that he had built that he still had. One of the things is a civil war cannon scenery of six horses, a soldier, the casson and cannon. He built the casson and cannon from scratch and it wasn't untill recently that I "fired off" the cannon. A load of blackpowder and a 5mm pellet is what it shoots. Lots of fun.
The thing is though is that times have changed so much. We didn't have computers, cell phones, and all the trappings of today. We had one TV in the home I grew up in and if we didn't like the show my dad was watching, we'd have to go do something else, like go build a model. Most of the kids I grew up with made some type of models but now a days there's hardly any kids out there that make models anymore or anything else for that matter. In the sixties most of the country was glued to the TV set watching the space missions but with the exception of the latest shuttle mission, most of them in the last dozen years had pretty much gone unnoticed. Everybodies time seems to go to other things these days. I did buy a kit recently and plan to build it when the rainy season sets in. Once I get it put together I'll have to muster up enough confidence to fly it after spending so much time building it. The previous kit that I built (4*40) made me so nervous to fly it that I sold it. Hopefully not with this one. One thing with ARFs is that if you pile it in you can order another one and it looks just like the one you crashed. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not........[:-]

CeeGee,

That's what makes flying what you build so much fun. With the exception of sky diving or repelling, I don't think you can get a bigger adrenaline rush than the first flight on an aircraft that you just invested 50-500 hours on (some of the scale guys push 2000). That first high speed run up the field... Nose up! Is she going to go left, right, what about elevation, don't stall 'er, where are those darn trims, ok she's level, now hands off, how does she stall, ok now land her. Wooow, ok now walk around, shake your arms, stop your knees from clanking, and fill 'er and go again.

You'll never get that feeling from an ARF!

In support of kits I have to comment on something I noticed. In my previous post I mentioned I built a SIG kadet LT - 40. I had the opertunity to examine the ARF version of this plane and I was surprised by the differnce in construction. The kit is by far a stronger built plane. Whereas the ARF seems to be designed to be built in the fastest time possible with few steps. I challange the rest of you kit builds to consider a similar cmparision and report your findings.

Happy Flying!![8D]