Some minor comments...
The .zip added to a .pk3 file happens on Win XP (home) and Win 2000 pro, as far as I know. I downloaded the Navy Seals skin just to try it and it happened again. I'm not sure about other OS's, though...
About the issue with skins, I extracted allied_manon.tik and allied_manon_fps.tik from pak0, I renamed them both as allied_manon2.tik and allied_manon2_fps.tik and packed them as a custom skin (nothing else was changed but the name). I installed them on my computer, started a non-dedicated server, and picked allied_manon2 as my skin (of course the model was manon herself, same textures and skeleton). Then I joined the game from another computer which didn't have the skin installed, and thats it, the first player was seen as the usual US army model, but he was pointing his bar up to the sky
. Same thing about german_winter2, but weapon appears on a different (and wrong) position. Maybe it's an issue with the spanish 1.11 patch, but I think is not, since I've read reports from non spanish users about the very same problem.
On a side note, I think mail notification is not working for the forum (I received no mail about your answers), but that's a minor concern. I'm so glad to have aa.com back... :P