I am going to be building a Midwest Aerostar 40 trainer. I did some reasearch online, and all reveiws I saw said that this is a really good plane; one of the best trainers. My question is why isn't Midwest more popular? I don't see them advertised in any of the magazines, and you really have to look to find anything on them. Just wondered.

That is actually a pretty easy question to answer ... Midwest only has five airplanes listed on their own website .... they are all kits (kit building is not the popular way to get an airplane anymore) .... Midwest has limited distribution ... Tower Hobbies carries three Midwest kits (one of those kits, the Citabria, is not listed on the Midwest website anymore and is now listed as limited quantities at Tower so I presume that it is discontinued too) ... I scour the mail order places and i don't know where else to find a Midwest kit now that Quantum is out of the business ... the last issue is price ... Midwest kits are very expensive in their class ... the Aerostar costs $135 and the next highest priced trainer kit at Tower is the LT-40 (heralded as the best trainer of all time) at $100 ... Midwest is really not competitive when you look at it as a whole.

Seems like a poor business model.

I got it for $50 on ebay still in the packaging. Seemed like a good deal. I've always enjoyed putting models together and figured this would be fun to build. I should have it Wednesday.

Dude, You Scored...

Midwest makes excellent kits. They're boat/ship models are real nice as well.