I almost reported this as a bug, but it’s probably just another inadequate performance by design of the flight save and load in FS.
Set up any sort of custom weather, save flight as .FLT in normal way. Exit flight, go to Main Menu, reload .FLT file, click FLY. There is no weather - clear skies, no wind.
What is worse, you cannot access weather settings after loading any .FLT file - clicking Flight Conditions has zero effect - the function is not active. So you are stuck with Clear Skies whenever using any .FLT that was using custom weather when saved.
Related Observation: If you set Live Weather or Preset Weather (Rain, Overcast, etc.) and save flight, then you will properly get the same conditions (Live or Preset) when reloading the flight file.
Speed1994, Thank you very much for your suggestion. But I just tried those changes and there was no effect - Live or Preset Weather remains the only weather types that can be save and recalled with a .FLT file - that is apparently by design as there are no entries in the .FLT to specify any custom parameters such as specific cloud layer, visibility and most important, wind.
The very annoying behavior is the inability to change any weather, or even the time of day, after loading a .FLT Yes I can get a toolbar after loading the .FLT but clicking the cloud icon shows an completely deactivated flight conditions dialog box. Everything is gray. And clicking Flight Conditions continues to have no effect (nothing happens at all) after loading a .FLT file.
If we could at least have the ability to reprogram our own weather and time after loading a saved flight even if they are not properly restored, that would be a step in the right direction.
I think these are all intentional behaviours of the sim so we need to push Asobo to put a lot more emphasis on wall flight conditions in the file save/recall process.