Ken, two things come to mind. First is it sounds like you are running nose heavy. The up elevator that most would trim into a nose heavy airplane actually creates a down force on the airplane as a whole and emulates an increase in wing loading.

second is that the airplane just plainly sounds out of trim. Have you checked the wing and tail incidences, thrust angles and fin alignment? In order to fly pattern well you need to trim out the airplane to require as few correction inputs as possible. An airplane that is trimmed for only a single flight attitude ( moderate speed, upright ) will change trim whenever the attitude is changed. This increases the workload as evidenced by your post of having to feed in down at the top of a loop.

The first step to successful pattern flying is the build/setup of the airplane. Being you have an ARF, you must now verify all the angles are correct and/or fix the discrepancies.