Eureka! I actually got my act together and fixed this mess (Much thanks to Hagar, Happ, and James)! And what a stupid mess it was...

...So if it can help spare any of my miserable anguish to others, I'll try, for a moment, to give something back and share a few hard learned lessons:

#1). If you replace 3rd party aircraft to CFS in a situation like this, make sure that both their FOLDER NAMES and their TITLES in the CFG files are identical to the originals. I studiously copied the CFG titles, but neglected to accurately reproduce my folder names (Duh...). MB apparently recognizes aircraft based on their folder names as they appear in the CFS2 AIRCRAFT folder, while CFS itself seems to read the titles from the CFG file in the individual aircraft data. This explains why the  suspect planes properly appeared when I ran CFS, but not when I ran Mission Builder (someone please correct me if this is wrong...). I had four bogus missions, and this problem was indigent to all of them. Out of the four, this fix cured only the first one. Which brings me to lesson #2...

#2). If you've created a seaplane base entry in your Airbases.dat file without a scenery BGL ( or any other such airfield, for that matter), the ID number must match the number of the original airfield (id=xxxx) as listed in the original mission data file. When I re-installed (or re-added) airfields in the Airbases.dat file, I ended up with ID numbers which did not match the originals. In every mission but this one (those which referenced 3rd party airfields) the number disparity didn't seem to make any difference. They worked fine in spite of it, and I'm surmising that the reason must be somehow linked to their scenery BGLs (again, correct me if I'm wrong). When I changed the seaplane base ID number in the old, saved, mission file, to match the new seaplane base number in my new Airbases.dat entries, the whole thing came together. Which cured mission #two of four, and brings us to...

#3). This problem was really arcane. Chris Westerveldt apparently changed the order of his two "SI Mbanika" airfields when he repackaged his Solomons stuff a while back (along with re-naming them, to boot!). So when I re-entered them into the Airbases.dat file, the ID number seqence was now backwards to the way my mission data had originally recorded them. [runway.1]'s ID number now came AFTER [runway.2]'s, and the whole mission seemed to go into freefall. I tried switching the lat/long data and changing the ID sequence to follow properly, but this suddenly created a new problem with the lat/long info in the formation waypoint listings. It took me a whole lot of work and inductive reasoning to do it, but I finally ended up manually dis-associating all the aircraft from all the airbases, removed all airbase data from the mission files, and then used MB to put everthing back together normally--with correct ID info and sequence (whew!). Finally, I changed the mission's player airfield name to the new Maskrider version, and that seems to be that. Three out of four fixed...

#4). A doozey! Pray for Divine Intervention. For some unknown reason--utterly unfathomable to me--mission number four suddenly started saving all by itself. So, if anybody made any changes on this one, it sure wasn't me!


So that's it! I hope I didn't ramble too much, but If anyone else can benefit from my mistakes, it just might make me feel--ever so slightly--a little bit less sheepish! Any thoughts, corrections, or questions, please feel free to let me know...

Regards,

Mongoose One

Thanks, Happ. I think there's an old saying somewhere which tells us that pain is the source of all memory. And with that little nugget in mind, I don't think I'm going to forget anything about THIS particular episode anytime soon!

Regards,

Mongoose

Thanx, Hagar. I know exactly what you mean about aircraft folders with multiple variations. I used to have several of those specimens in my collection before my Hard Drive went south. Fortunately for me, I now realize, they never happened to make it into any of my missions! I will definitely keep this in mind...

Thanx again,

Mongoose