Thanks for the interest.

One obvious way to save weight with current techniques would be to make it a fixed gear taildragger. I did that on my Deception practice plane. I also used a four-stroke on the Deception. I want this aircraft to be closer to the original. I'm willing to accept a performance decrease for that.

If you really wanted to apply modern techniques, you could make a mold of the completed fuselage and create a carbon/kevlar version. I don't currently have the skills to do that. I would like to learn these techniques, but not at the risk of this Curare.