The Zeke is not a crutch. It takes patience to fly it well. It is not fast, and does its best work below 250 mph. Get it faser than that and its turn becomes sluggish.
It will improve your SA, simply because you aren't able to really effectively extend away from your opponent, or extend out of a furball. What you need to to with it is work it in it's envelope. Force your opponent to slow down and fight your fight.
It can, and does, do remarkably well in base and fleet defence. Fighting with a zeke (or against one) is like a knife fight in a phone booth.
Echo Soda's A/C pages. Great resource.
If you want to learn this aircraft, Ren is spot on with hitting the TA and spending some time with a trainer. I would recommend that if you do hit the TA fly disimilar aircraft. IE have the trainer (or your opponent) fly a pony, hog, spit etc. Flying zeke vs zeke will only sharpen the knife. It won't help you learn to throw the knife.
cheers,
RTR