minor irritations

[She-Wolf]

mornin' all. Seems I am fated never to complete a whole war in SH4. I recently started getting strange problems with the drive SH4 was on ( it kept disappearing), and in an effort to resolve the issue ( turned out to be a cable) I reformatted that drive and started again. I have always played with mods previously, but this time I decided to run the game without any mods added, just to see. It is the Gold version. I get on with it fine, though it is a bit easier than I am used to - the escorts don't seem to pick me up even when quite close and don't seem to really try either. Often one will just park itself and stay there for hours - a tempting target after dark. I am a bit miffed though. So far I have earned one medal for downing 8 ships, but no medal on the next patrol when I sunk another six, nor have my crew reaped any medals, and four patrols in I am still in the same boat with nothing much to spend renown on. I hope to be offered more appreciation next time I am in port as I have just seen off a fleet carrier, with two torps, but we will see. I am always bumping into convoys - far more so than when playing the main mods, which is nice as it stops me getting bored, but it is very difficult to get on with the patrol as I am constantly plagued by aircraft overhead. Far too often to be reasonable I think. Also the weather is hardly ever anything but calm and sunny. One brief choppy sea and one small rainy period in four patrols so far.
I wondered if I could modify the weather and airplane incidence in a script file, like you could in SH3. Not sure I know where that would live in Windows 7. Can you help please?