Steve P? he'll never be able to hold them beans to himself. We'll find out!
Hey, I just re-read the question and realized 'lunchmoney' is talking about 'repainting'.
I'm not sure what exactly he means, but I AM sure that I hate painting over old fabric just to make it look good for another year or 2. It's a waste of paint. A guy oughtta just fly the thing and be happy, then recover in a couple years! Unless he's gonna sell the bird after it gets the new paint, in which case, he oughtta be tarred and feathered, because some naive dreamer will always buy a pretty bird and be stuck with a recover within a few years of his purchase.
Also, Jerry, I'm not so sure that Aerothane topcoat weighs much of anything. It must be somones old-wives-tale because they think A-thane is like the high-solids automotive polyurethanes, which it is not.
I pulled stits cover off a wing a few years ago that was topcoated with A-thane. The build-up of coats was so thick that the tape edges were almost hidden (not really hidden, but lots of coating thickness smoothing the edges).
So I rolled the fabric all up and weighed it on a scale that gets certified every year....... 9.5 pounds for one wing, no aileron or flap cover.
I weighed the wing-fabric off my -11 on the same scale....it's Ceconite and dope with maybe 1 rejuvenate job....17 pounds!
I don't think Aerothane is heavy at all. And I also kind of snicker when I hear a guy talk about a 'light' fabric job....especially if I know the guy talking is not experienced, but is just an owner repeating something he heard. There IS such a thing as a 'heavy' cover job, where way too much coating build-up is layed on, but I see this as just an improperly done job. A 'light' job is simply a properly done job. (unless 'light' means 'left off some or all of the silver', which is WRONG because the fabric will lose a lot of strength in the first year without UV protection)
Aerothane is pretty cool stuff once you learn how easy to go with the gun. The problem with it, or any other 'shiny' topcoat, other than toxicity, is that repairs will always be more apparent than a repair on a doped or polytoned job.
What's funny is that guys think of their shiny new fabric airplane as some kindof 'forever' beauty. It's not. It WILL get chipped or ripped, and WILL need a repair. Get over it, it's not a metal airplane!!