so this morning at 0800PST I installed IL2:1946 via gog.com and it worked wonderfully!
I installed "setup_il-2_sturmovik_1946_2.0.0.6"
only and guess what? it's 4.11.1m according to the tell-tale loading screen! Basically by only installing that, and not also going through "patch_il-2_sturmovik_1946_2.0.3.9" I was able to do this.
This way I can easily have three versions of the game -
1) untouched fully updated IL2
2) 4.11.1 with HSFX 6.0 for some of the servers I'd like to fly on
3) 4.12.1 with HSFX 7.0 for the other servers I'd like to fly on!
so all's good on this end, thanks everyone for your help!
*edit 23:54PST -
well, I loaded the game again, and it froze at 5%. It became even hard to get into the "task manager" to close it. Had to go to a full "restart" instead. I'm checking out some things online as I type this
please see
https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,37814.0.htmlso I don't hijack this thread, since it's "me" related, I'm sure... not IL2. Maybe it's Vista64 related, always good to put the blame on good ol' Microsoft!
*mental note, getting either Linux or XP on my "uber-desktop" lol