fs2004 Carrier quandary

FS2004- Recently I've created an aircraft carrier in Gmax, and all is well, except for trying to get decent textures on the deck.  What I'm trying to do is get good skids in the trap area, and maybe some grime here and there.  Sounds simple but it isn't.  First off, I saved the carrier hull and island as one .bgl, then the deck as another .bgl.  Good so far, I use the FS2004 SDK to place the hull, then duplicate that location for the deck.  I have two options, and have tried them both-

1- use the FS2004 exporter, and have all the deck markings and skids (what I want) slightly elevated on the Z axis to create layers above the deck texture.

2- use the FS2002 exporter and ModelConverterX to layer the textures (what I really want).

I have a flat 'airport' at 0 altitude, created in ADE9 in a low-priority scenery area, and have my actual 'airport' with an altitude of 19.9 meters for the carrier (deck) at a higher scenery priority.  That is all good.

The trick is to get a layered FS2002 series of textures 'up' to 19.9 meters.  It doesn't of course want to do that being a 'ground poly'.  Unchecking both boxes in ModelConverterX got my deck 'up' but it wasn't right, with a weird invisibility as you panned around, and this wasn't unexpected as Arno has warned.  So that leaves using the FS2004 exporter and having the markings and skids all slightly raised up from the base deck texture.  Sounds easy, but no matter how much I raise the skids, or how much I tweak the alpha channel in DXT1, I get a pool with skids that's invisible right down to the ocean.  I've even raised the skids poly in Gmax up a full meter and still get this.  I'm using DXT3 format because of the variable transparency, put I've tried DXT1 with Alpha as well.To me it makes no sense- I should see the basic deck texture on the poly below, not the ocean!  I do this all the time on land-based scenery for runway grime and skids, using the FS2002 SDK.

So, I'm stuck without a decent skid texture, unless I meticulously create textures and also meticulously map out the deck- I have my deck texture as a close-up of light-gray asphalt with a single tie-down, which mass-produces as the over-all deck texture via a small UVW Map (if you don't know what I'm talking about, Google 'carrier deck' and you'll see what I mean- all those little round tie-downs on the deck).

Any help out there?