ORIGINAL: carrellh
Your description of needing full down elevator while inverted makes me think the model may be too nose heavy.
Probably not. Trainers by design (typically) have a flat bottom air foil that produces a lot of lift. This is why when we trim them for 1/2 throttle, they will climb with higher throttle settings. And yes, they are set nose heavy for stability. They have small control surfaces to counteract the overcontrolling student.
Combine these design factors and you end up with a plane that really doesn't want to fly inverted, and when it is, it will very much want to produce downward "lift".
This is why aerobatic planes typically have little or no dihedral and symmetrical air foils.
The 4 Star will be an excellent next step.
I normally advise my students to learn to recover the trainer from all attitudes, but don't expect to learn aerobatics with it. Its just too frustrating for the beginning pilot. Lessons learned in recovery apply to all planes.
Brad