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I have finally figured out how to drop sonobuoys and use my dipping sonar. (Thanks Warhorse64). Does anybody know how to make a sonobuoy field? I remember in the Harpoon II game it was easy to create a patrol zone. You added waypoints and created a mission. That was it. I have created course paths to have a helo or Viking circle around a contact and drop buoys manually, but there has to be a better way.

Thanks

Ironhand125

I think if you make an ASW mission and assign a buoy carryinghelo or plane to it it will drop rows of buoys within the refpoints.

Freek

In HCE, if an air unit with sonobuoys is assigned to a formation patrol, it will drop buoys at random points automatically throughout its assigned patrol sector. This seems to occur at a rate of about 1 buoy per minute, so be aware that most fixed-wing ASW aircraft have a lot more time on station than sonobuoys; the buoys expire after a relatively short time, meaning that for the last third to half of their patrol time, your ASW aircraft are reduced to hoping for a lucky visual sighting or MAD hit. Absent a formation to patrol within, you are reduced to deploying the buoys manually. I'm pretty sure that automatic non-formation ASW patrols are on the wish list for game improvements.  [8D]

Thank you for all the help guys. After playing around, I realized that i'm just looking for a way to use he unit window to plot courses and the formation editor. I'm almost ready to challenge someone.

IH125

I don't know if this is still relevant but you can make sonobouy fields using the course editor as following:

-Click on course
-Click on the map where you want to start your sonobouy field
-Click speed
-Put speed on cruise or higher then click ok
-Click speed again but..
-Now click speed loiter and altitude low/vlow.
-Click on map for the next waypoint
_keep doing this until your sonobouy field is done