[AbortedMan]

If you use the loadout screen that's in the "plane" menu, the button next to "fly" when you're about to load yourself into the cockpit, nothing changes no matter what you enter...only your convergence sticks.

You have to save a quick mission (or any custom mission, or create a new one) to the folder your single missions are in, I forget where it is, or copy your quick missions to your single missions directory. Once that's done, you have to open the full mission builder, load your mission, select your aircraft group and edit its properties under the appropriate tab...there's a dropdown field that is labeled "loadouts" or something to that effect, change it to what you want, save the mission, and load it.

It's a lot to do, I know, and my instructions are vague (sorry cant walkthrough it right now, building a new PC). This is the only fix I've found that works.

Note: you can test to see if your custom loadouts are actually working if you change your tracers, ie, make the 4 and 5 guns load tracers instead of the default 1 and 8. The game loads whatever ammo the mission data file specifies, not the loadouts menu, that only works in multiplayer.