Let me start by saying that I love a good ARF ... HOWEVER, I prefer my planes to look "different" than everyone elses. So I tend to change the color schemes etc. I'm curious as to the preferred way of doing this though so thought I'd get some opinions.

Taking into consideration the following factors:

1. Weight
2. Ease of task
3. Durability

Would it be better to strip and recover or paint?

Colin.

See my RC Boys Decathlon (Red scheme is the "before") as an example of one of my planes that I "transformed" by paint and minimal use of covering OVER TOP of original covering.

I would say that the decision would be based on your covering skills vs painting skills... I love to cover my planes! I find it relaxing and rewarding. And with so many choices of covering you could actually bring the weight DOWN if you select a lightweight covering. If you like to paint but are concerned about weight you could cover with lightweight covering and then airbrush very lightly a few coats, you would still get a weight savings if you are careful.
Another benefit of doing ONLY covering is the fact that due to temp changes the covering can wrinkle. Just apply an iron and you can fix that no problem... I would not do that with paint on the covering unless I was EXTREEMLY careful with temp and the force I applied with the iron...

This is me, but if I were painting a plane, it would be covered in a fabric material. The nice thing about fabric is it rarely sags, at least in my experience. There is no need to re-shrink it all the time so there is no issue with heat and paint.

I prefer paint, sprayed over glass/epoxy or fabric.

Ken