Hi Rob, another tip that the game seems to like is to use your high frequency sonar. Located on the Dive control panel (Not active Sonar). This will pick up close contacts that are too quiet for passive sonar to pu. Which in real life is bogus, because I spent quite a few patrols on the 678 boat where we "Hovered" near the bottom of the barents sea and were. Hovering is a feature that the game does not have. But I guess setting your depth near the bottom (shallow waters) will duplicate this. Then we are at all stop and use our SPM to adjust for current drifting. We would pick up anything coming into or leaving the Soviet Union. That was circa 70-80's and for the pitiful inability for the autocrew to pick up stuff when you are going slow is a design flaw with the game. I have run these scenarios and the info to a few sonar techs who knew the BQQ-5 like the back of their hand, and they chuckle and tell me it is just a game and very unrealistic as far as the Sonar capabilities are concerned. I think Sonalysts has some real sims they developed for the US Navy and purposefully scaled back the true BQQ-5 ability in the game for classified reasons. One ST told me once, "you give me a BQQ-5 and I can detect whales farting 5 miles away!" At some point I hope to be able to file edit these settings, so that the reflection will be more realistic. Have you played SH4? That is called a sim as well, and notice how the Sonar picks up contacts so well? By sheer comparison with a modern day sub against an old diesel boat, it seems the old boats actually had better sonar than today. But that is not the case. Someday maybe a sim will come out that gives us more realism. But until then use high frequency sonar for the ability to find close objects and subs in this game.
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