Use the DA50. Cut out the floor under the canopy, lose the spinner and pants and use li-ion batteries and replace all the stock controls rods with either Titanium or CF control rods and use ball links on the servo side of the rods and use Gorilla glue on all the hinge points and when joining the wing and I'll bet you could see 13lbs on a DA50
Gorilla glue is much lighter than epoxy. one ounce of epoxy is 4 ounces in weight, one ounce of GG is one ounce of weight and you will use roughly 4 ounces of each when assembling this plane
Yes, Gorilla glue is great at everything you mention above , and you can add to benefit that it is also flexing and epoxy is brittle. The only draw back, it expands when it dries, so scale appearance is sloppy, but who cares how it looks on the ground if it flies great.
I would not use anything other than Li-ions since battery capacity is greater, battery pack is lighter, at 6v servos are stronger and faster.
I use CF slivers over 4-40 rods this combo worked good for me with ball links.
So, ahhh, the only thing I need to get is: DA-50R, GP CAP232 and 5645mg on ailerons, 5625mg on elevators and 5955tg on rudder and I'll good to go
