Last Month the Japanese try to retrive this mod a little bit more. They played in the at 2pm CET. At the moment the gametracker,com Server Monitorring is off. Hope soon they turn it on. The ranking seems to work.
Yes, you need 1.81. Did you first uninstall the original Battlefield 1942 game before installing the Free version of Battlefield 1942? Because if you did not, it is not going to work.
Battlefield 1942 serials/cd keys are stored in the registry and it could be the problem that your client of Battlefield 1942 is still using your retail cd key. That way it will not detect your game as a free to play version and it will not show you nor allow you to connect to free to play servers.