I agree with you about clutter and visibility, fuzeman. I'm not sure how to solve it yet, but I'm thinking about it.
1st option/idea - when using trails in the films, I have suggested before and still suggest that the friendly( your plane ) have green trails and the enemy have red trails......
or 2nd idea- in the film viewer, make it a clickable option to turn on trails for each individual plane in the film, as each individual plane is clicked to have trails enabled, the film ( FE ) picks a different color for each added plane trails.....