Mur,
I am assuming your familar with the extract utility tool and procedure. If not, get the SFP1 extract utility in the SF/WOV utilities category. You cant do anything without doing that first. You must extract the airfield data INI's from the CATDATA file, make your changes then place it in the VietnamSea terrain folder. This will over ride the default settings. The changes you wish to make are done in the individual airfield dataini's. The default setting for the lights to come on is 0.25. If you increase that number they come on sooner. Theres a post in here at CA I think in the SF/WOV mods section that tells you a bit about it. Each light set has to be done indiviually. For example VietnamSea_Airfield4 dataini:
[LightSet002]
LightOn=0.25 <<<<<<increase this, the higher the num, the earlier they come on.
Color=0.25,0.25,0.88
Material=LightMaterial
Height=0.5000
Size=0.2000
Directional=FALSE
Prefix=TPoint
TPoint01=-279.0145,-726.979
This is just a partial of the lightset for the taxi lights.
You can also play with the environmental settings dataini's which will affect when the lights will come on.
Its best to check around, read posts, and check the knowledge base. Lot of stuff in there.
It may sound complicated, but once you get the hang of it, its quite easy to modify your INI files.
Some of the mods are already done regarding this subject. Look in the downloads section section for SF/WOV/WOE.
The game does not provide for lighted carriers.