I hear you Vern.
It's all about making the emphasis be on the "process", not the "product"; the "doing" not the "having". Printwood really isn't an imposition, particularly if you like to pick the wood you use and make little structural tweaks as you proceed with a build. And by the way, I still use Ambroid; it dries faster than you might think.
Most of the FF models on the market need some tweaking (some alot) if you plan to fly them actively and get good performance.
Scigs30 and Froggy, great looking models you've produced from the Guillows kits. The local FAC group here in San Antonio is building models from the Guillows 500 series of WW2 fighters. We're all lightening them up some for rubber power. Some ask "why bother" with the kit if you're going to change a lot of stuff. Valid enough point, but I guess nostalgia is part of it. For those of us who were kids in the '60s and '70s Guillow's kits were in just about all of the stores that had a model section; particularly true in the Northeast where I grew up.
For those interested, check out the pics from the 2009 Cole and Rita Palen Memorial FF meet in Red Hook NY. We held the meet this past year on July 25, the 100th anniversary of Bleriot's channel crossing, and we had a special event for Pioneers. Here they on Jonathan Fallon's web site:
Events-Free-FlightMeets