I was similarly frustrated by the original flap design. Eventually one of my flaps hinge area got damaged and I modified my flaps as follows:
1. cut them both off
2. cut them in 1/2
3. permantly mounted the top half back into the wing
4. fabricated new flaps from light ply, mounted them the full width of the flap cutout using a round carbon fiber dowel
5. now I have 2 "split" flaps ( lile a P-40) with more surface area than the originals and no"spoilers" on the top of the wing
6. These slow the plane down to a crawl and allow ridiculously slow landings with very little pitch problems
7. IF you note from the C-ARF website, the new LIGHTNING design has these type of flaps as well

ENJOY