I bashed mine a bit, too. That rudder just looked too small (even though I'm not a 3-D flyer). I matched the rudder profile to the elevators and ended up adding about 40% more surface area. The canopy is tinted dark with Rit and I painted the cockpit black (my pilot is a finger-puppet of Sheri Lewis' Lambchop). She has an OS-70 II in the nose and it's a good all-around sport plane. I also made the lower cowl scoop semi-functional with a 1/4"x 1" air intake for added cooling and as a drain for any fuel/oil reside in the engine compartment.
I have triple rates, with thehigh throws from the instructions in the middle (plus 1/4" extra rudder) and I never seem to need the high rates (or the low ones, either). I have about 1/8" down elevator on the apron flap mix. I have a bit of exponential on the high and middle rates to lower response near centered. I'm a pretty sedate flyer, and in fact I have a bit of differential in the ailerons to give almost an axial roll.
Mine is yellow fuselage with orange under the wing and yellow w/black tips on the top (plus the Air Force stars & bars on the top) . I tinted the canopy dark. The rudder I striped orange and black. Everything dark is on the top except the tires. I can well imagine that silver being quite hard to pick out attitude. Looks sharp, though.
[Say, how do you load an image so it has to be clicked for the fullsize. Mine are huge!]