OK, no servos in the tail for starters. All you need is a single elevator pushrod made into a Y at the exits, done the way that Pattern birds are frequently set up. So you make sure you have some form of rear bearing to keep it from moving side-to-side. It's a good idea to also have some lightweight guide in the mid-section to keep it from swaying about. The elevator servo can be something as little as a 4721, though I currently am using an Airtronics 94358. Something 120 oz-in or higher is needed. It is mounted on its side, exactly centered to keep the geometry right as it moves and to guarantee that the elevator halves movie equally (assuming everything else was done right with the horns etc). You can use a 1/4" spruce stick for the pushrod with 2-56 hardware or go CF, but you don't need a honking big, heavy arrowshaft if it supported well. Use 4-40 hardware if 2-56 makes you nervous, the weight isn't much different, but you lose some adjusting precision.

Rudder is pull-pull cables. Again, around a 120 oz-in servo is just enough, but better to go with something in the 140 to 200 oz-in range. Use a light tailwheel etc. I ended up lightening up the plywood frame for the fuselage, especially aft of the wing TE. How much, I don't remember, but it's overbuilt to begin with and you can trim the lightening holes larger to lose more weight back there. Throw away the ABS cowl and wheel pants and get something in a nice FG set. You can go CF on the landing gear, though I didn't. If you need to, you can drill some lightening holes in the center of the gear and gain back a little bit. I didn't have to. Mount the tank in the mid section, use a pump or pressure regulator system to get a reliable run if using glow. You don't need any extra hardware up front now that the tail end of the barbell has been slimmed down. The tail on mine was rebuilt using sheeted foam cores, since mine started life in 1996 or '97 and originally had the flat stab. Dick Hanson was cutting those cores at one point in time. Anyway, this is a lightweight replacement to the original design which was structurally inadequate without bracing wires or else beefing it up alot internally. As I understand it, the current MW kit has the stab constructed of wood ribs etc, which might be heavier than the foam tail I did. Not sure though, but the foam tail was considerably lighter than the original slab of wood. I'm sorry I can't recall the extra savings for each step, since it was 5 years ago when I did the retrofit.

The wing spar is overkill and can have lightening holes cut in the outer sections of the internal plywood joiner, i.e., outboard of the ribs that align with the fuselage sides. It's tempting to dump a bunch of epoxy in the spar box and make it heavier that way too, use enough to wet everything and keep it at that.