1) 30-40% of the time I use AICarriers.NET to load a carrier. I am ashamed to say I only tried it with the 10 nmi Ahead. I will try it with other settings.
2) The boat is directly ahead, with it's BRC approximately -9° off my plane's heading. As displayed on the HUD Switch Panel NAV1 display, which auyomatically sets when landing on a carrier, providing the correct frequency is in. Which it is. I am pretty sure the HUD compas at the top of the display, and the NAV1 window are both True North, not Mag. I may well be wrong, however.
No, the magnetic variation is more than -9°, and I am normally off either San Francisco, or Sand Diego (I've been there often, and I use SAND advisedly!), occaisionally outside Pueget Sound. The MagVar on the coast is about the same, all the way up and down the coast. About 14° east at KNUQ (Moffet Federal), as a relatively central location. Roughly. Give or take. Approximately. You get it, I think
I normally use a heading of 250-270° on my plane. And almost invariably right on a multiple of 10 exactly. 240°, 250°, and so on. Makes it easier on my poor pea brain to get the backcourse quickly and easily.
3) No, I haven't tested it with AICarriers2r2.exe, but I will if you think I should. The .NET version loads my old laptop less, so I've used it almost exclusively since I started using FSX-SE.
Thank you for the quick response, and I always THOUGHT the ship(s) was/were supposed to load with the plane's heading as their BRC. I don't know if the answers help you or not, but there they are.
Like I say, it's an annoyance, not a critical bug in the program. Besides, it's easy enough to fix with a turn to Starboard from the menu. Or a brief bank-n-pull, so to speak.
Have fun, and this is a VERY low priority thing.
Pat☺