My long time friend and the one responsible for my addiction always had the coolest planes, motors and hardware. Moki radials, Comp Arf P47 and Corsair, and of course a really cool Stadaucher. Oh man, those were the days.
I know exactly what you mean. My buddy Tony, the one that owned the Ace Extra 230 in the first post is the one that got me into flying and he always had the cool stuff as well.
I was messing with helicopters a little in 1985 because Tony got me interested in them. When he bought a plane I went to watch him fly and after a week he was already flying around having fun. I was still in my backyard trying to hover a helicopter with no gyro and mechanical collective. After seeing how far he had progressed in one week I went to the hobby shop and traded my Mini Boy heli for a Super Box Fly 40. By the next weekend I was at the flying field and Tony was teaching me to fly on a buddy box. The FOGs at the field really hated that, but couldn't find any rule against it at the time so all they could do was whine. I think they were really mad because he taught me how to fly in 2 days. But honestly after hovering a stone age helicopter, flying a trainer was a breeze!
Tony had all the cool stuff, and was a great builder. He had a really cool Byron P-51 with the belt driven four blade prop, a BVM Sport Shark ducted fan in about 1988. Those were way ahead of their time. He also had other cool stuff including a few other BVM airplanes and was on BVM's builder list for awhile. He quit flying when he had kids. After a bit I wasn't having fun anymore without a buddy to share it with so I quit as well. In 2005 he started flying again and tried to get me in as well, but I didn't. He would come by once in awhile and tell me about his planes, but it wasn't until 2011 that he got me hooked again. He called and wanted me to do some painting on his Carf 3 meter Su-31. I worked on it over 4th of July weekend and after staring at the thing for days and it's DA200, I was interested. He got me to the field and let me fly his smaller 33% Sukhoi with a DA85 and I was hooked.