Okay, so you guys have been awesome for these little question so far, and I figure they could help any newbies stumbling onto this site looking for guidance soooo....

As most people who do take-off mode in f4af might've noticed, waiting too long in traffic on the tarmac might (read: WILL MOST DEFINITELY) have the game go back to the menu screen if you are appx. 3 minutes late taking off. My question: HOW DO YOU STOP IT?!? For a sim based on realism I find it kind of hard to believe that everything ends I'd you're even slightly late in the air.

I find this annoying.

And I'm hoping I'm not the first.

SO.

Fellow sim-pilots, I come to you for help. How do I allow this game to fully realize my dreams of being stuck on the tarmac for 15 minutes while a C-130 does circles on the runway trying to figure out where to go? How can I feel the joy of having said C-130 suddenly pop into the nether, leaving me with the feeling of "Finally I can take off." Might I be able to experience the thrill of going mach .8 trying to get to the waypoints in time? Oh gods (and members) of the forum, please show me the way...to fix this.

Thanks.

Hey ashoob,
Yes, there is a way to fix this. Pretty simple actually.
Enter you primary falcon directory. Open the 'Campaigns' folder and choose your default theater of choice. Within your choosen theater you will see a 'configuration settings' filed entitled "atc". Open it up in notepad. You will see the following:

;This is the amount of time in minutes the player has from the
;time he enters the sim to get off the ground or get bumped back
;to the UI. (Note: regardless of this value the player is always
;given at least 1 minute past his scheduled takeoff time)
PlayerBumpTime = 10

Simple change the last value to whatever you want. As you can see I have already changed mine to 10 minutes to allow enough time for myself to setup the SMS page as I want.
note: you will have to do this for every "battlefield" as it is not a global (universal) setting
Hope this helps.