@sthompsonThanks for yr response and advice. I did find the issue,
I am using Skatezilla's DCS Updater Utility to launch DCS and found that I was pointing the launcher to the wrong Saved Game folder.
ie. C:\Users\mace\Saved Games\DCS
It should have been C:\Users\mace\Saved Games\DCS.openbeta
The launcher Saved Game path actually is blank when pointing to the correct folder...that led me to believe that the path was not correct. See below.