Geez, let me see if I have this straight. Since I fly both C/L and R/C and I have ARF's and planes that I have scratch built and built from kits, am I a modeler or a pilot? If I'm flying a plane that I built, am I not a pilot? Can't you be a pilot AND a modeler? I don't think I've ever heard anyone say, "man, that guy doing all those 3D stunts over there is a really good modeler". I don't want to be labeled as a REAL modeler or a pilot, who cares? I'm just a guy playing with toy airplanes. We need more guys playing with toy airplanes, don't drive them away by being overly critical.
Anyone out there naive enough to think that control line folks are the only ones who have the skills and the the know how to build an airplane needs to step back and take a closer look. Yes, there are a lot of ARF's out there in R/C world, no doubt. Maybe there are a lot of ARF's that show up at your local club every weekend. However, all you have to do is go to a Warbird event or a Giant Scale Event (most R/C clubs do them as fund raisers) and you will be amazed at the talented builders who populate the R/C world. We have a guy in our club who builds giant scale warbirds with details that are just sick. Thousands of rivets, panels, aging paint, cockpits that duplicate the original plane, they are truly works of art. He built a B-24 that looked like the machine guns would work and oh, he built those by hand also.
I am by no means trying to diminish the amount of talent and hard work that it takes to build one of our beautiful C/L stunters. I'm just saying that for every one of our amazing C/L builders, there's probably 10 R/C builders that are just as talented. It's all about numbers. You do know that us control line guys only make up a teenie, tiny portion of the overall model airplane population, don't you? Doesn't it seem logical that with the huge number of people out there flying R/C airplanes all over the world, a fair amount of them would also be able to build as well as we do? Why would anyone think that building skills are limited to those folks that only fly control line? If you doubt my word, go to any of the 3 big RC forums; RC Groups, RC Universe, or Flying Giants. Take some time, look around. All three of them have an area devoted to scratch/kit built airplanes. You think that Stunthanger gets a lot of traffic? Take a look at some of those threads. I was looking at one today that had over a MILLION hits. Take a look at some of the airplanes under construction and recently completed and you will see what I mean. A lot of them are built by hand, just like our stunters. Some are built from kits, some are scratch built from plans. Just because Joe Average at your local field is flying an ARF, don't take that as a true representation of the entire R/C population because that is definitely not the case. I don't care what it is, every single discipline in this hobby has some very talented builders and pilots (there's that word again), why can't we just leave it at that?
Maybe a guy has three kids, works 60 hours a week and lives in an apartment. He has neither the time nor the place to build a beautiful airplane, but he really loves flying. Mom probably gives him two hours on Saturday afternoon to indulge in his hobby. Are you going to criticize him for going out and buying an ARF? Seriously? All he wants to do is fly, not spend a year building something. Does that make him any less of a modeler? I don't think so. He has the same passion as all of us, he just doesn't have the opportunity or the facilities to devote to building an airplane. Hey, I love to play golf, but I have no desire to go out and build my own golf clubs-does that mean I'm not a REAL golfer?
We're all modelers and we're all pilots, I don't care if we build them or buy them, it's the love of the hobby that really matters and that's what will keep us around for years to come. I'd much rather have 100 guys flying ARF's at our local R/C field than to have no club and no field at all. I guess I'm lucky, the R/C guys in my club encourage us to fly our C/L planes at the field. Doesn't get any better than that.