This is sounding more and more like either a driver issue or the card about to let go! I don't have the latest BA set on this pc so I'll download them now and have a look
Be careful updating your driver.. it usually ends in tears for me!
I downloaded the 1-11 Red Tail paints and am not seeing anything outside the ordinary mate. That particular blue does lend itself to shade changes in FS but no more than any similar colour. I've since changed the textures to 32bit-No Mips as they display better on my 8800GTX (which is a great FSX card but not so good in FS9 for some reason)
I think this seems to be the way nvidia are going mate but for why is a mystery I used to be able to select AA from the systray (and still can on my old system with a 6800GT) but with the 8800GTS, there are no drop down menus off AA and simply clicking on the AA tab opens up nvidia control centre
Having stumbled across this thread, I feel like I've found a sweet-shop!
Shouldn't all this fine work have a higher profile somewhere, e.g. alongside the 1-11 downloads in the library..?