That encounter always worked fine for me (dragon shows up if you've gone far enough in the main quest for them to appear - or doesn't show up if you've gone to Bleak Falls Barrow prior to advancing the quest that far). That's because I don't use the unofficial patch. It's full of ignorant and subjective changes. I participated in the beta but nobody working on the project was able to resolve issues that were being reported. It was and remains a shi# show not unlike Bethesda itself so there shouldn't be any surprise there.
But this isn't the topic of this thread...
