Hi All,

I agree with Mike and Rip and all those giving a little support for ARF's. I check up new posts on this site every day and read up on building and finishing techniques and gawp and drool and all the beautiful models you chaps build.

I, however, have just finishing an engineering degree and have been living in a motorhome for the last three years to keep costs down. There is no room to build and I have no time. I am working hard to get a job that will get me a house with a garage so I can build models like the ones I see on here, but in the mean time I have only foamies to keep my eye in and thankfully many of them look pretty nice!

I disagree to an extent people saying you don't learn anything... I was given a Parkzone 109 (shown below) and have been on the official forum on it seems very few people leave them in the stock configuration! Some mods are very sophisticated - although yes I agree they probably won't learn about things like washout and other important aspects of building a flying model but you learn a huge amount about which props can be used with which ESC's, current draw, battery life and electrical set up combinations.

I also think anything RC is beneficial to the hobby... Around my area I do not know a single other aeromodeller and so fly alone all the time. There are no clubs near to me either so I cannot fly a model with even a semi scale retractable undercarriage. I can dump my foamies down anywhere without damage.

In addition to the building space and tools problem, foamies have another thing going for them... as mentioned they do look good these days and they are cheap. I get a huge amount of fun flying them where I could not fly a large scale warbird I had built myself. I have flown off beaches, over rivers and lakes, in quarries, off golf courses and more to get nice pictures and challenge my flying ability. I would never want to do this with a model I had spent many hundred of hours building! The pics below are of my PZ Bf109 flown off a hillside out the back of my home just the other day.

Sam