If you are going to recover it, I would go with either silk, or silkspan. If it just has small tears in the fabric, you might just cover them with some selected decals. I am finishing up my fourth Midwest Magican, and all of mine have weighed in between 34 and 38 oz. ready to fly. I think it would probably fly OK up to about 42oz. with movable flaps, and all of mine have been done this way. Since I have built four of them, you can tell I really like them, and the last two have had McCoy 40 Red Heads on them. A very nice combo. It really does fly better than it looks like it should. One other thing, with the movable flaps, you can move the balance point back to just a little ahead of the spar.