Most of the scale fliers are worse than this. The really good builders don't generally work on their flying. There are exceptions, as usual.
Watching Pat McCurry fly his beautifully crafted award winners with precision and excellence was probably the height of my R/C event experience as a member of an audience. Like you say, many builders do not fly their models in competition. Look at the Riley racers for example, they are flown by Horizon members and the like. Guys like Bob Violet, McCurry, Steve Thomas, Platt, they all built and flew their models in competition. Sets them apart, I guess.
