You got rebased to Pearl? If you started in the Asiatic Fleet you should have been transferred to Freemantle.

This.....

I have found that the ships are usually in the direction of the first group of planes that come your way.

I normally try to follow the planes back to the carriers. That's actually how I found the Midway group during my first RSRD play through.

As far as the carrier planes are concerned......yes, the first positive direction from which you can determine their approach, would be the direction of travel you should take to intercept a possible carrier. I've found most of the time, the carrier planes travel in pairs (zero's, vals, or kate's). But, you'll need to be on your toes to catch that first possible fly-over and make a note as to their heading. With time compression running, you'll find the planes will head back and forth, making it almost impossible to make a correct guess as to which direction the planes are coming from (unless you made that first notation).

I made a test mission once using a couple of Jap ships steaming from the North, one was a carrier. Some distance behind the Jap group, I added a couple of American ships, one being an American carrier. My plan was to check range to target using the periscopes with the Jap ships, then surface to use the TBT with the following Allied ships. My surprise came while watching the Jap group go by, Allied planes had spawned, promptly attacking the carrier. The planes sunk it before I could do much of my testing. No Jap planes had attacked the American force, leaving me to think that by my observance of the Jap group, this detection caused the American forces to mount the attack. I had not issued a message of finding the Jap force, the attack came all on its own. I know detection of your sub will trigger an automatic response from the Axis side in several different ways.....so will the Allied side.

One other point about carrier based planes. The stock v1.5 game has the Shokaku CV having the G4M Betty Bomber!? Most of us have corrected this issue with our mods, taking the twin engine bomber off the carrier's inventory.

All of your suggestions are welcome and interesting but would someone please opine on the question about time! Is my game time, say 1300 hrs, the same as the missions time from the ME if it was 1300, or is my time an offset from my base time?

From everything I know it should be your base time.

Thanks Admiral.

Yes, and as I and Scurvy has stated, make sure you note the direction of the FIRST group that enters your spawn zone and then pay attention to other groups that come from that direction. This will give you an idea of a basic course, as if you just head in the direction of the first group, you may fall behind. What I do is mark the first group, then make marks from all other groups coming from that direction and use that as a basic course to try and get in front. If you don't notice and mark the first group, then you get planes coming and going and then you have to decide which direction.
Course, when I head that way, I watch for the big lag so I can check radar.

The problem of course is not to let planes spot you, so it's a lot of up and down and hoping you can come in contact. The bad news, if you're spotted, you may be dealing with hundreds of planes attacking you and lose any chance of catching the TF.

Must my sub be in proximity to a spot near the waypoints, but more than 20 nm, for this Car Div to spawn? Or, based on the campaign mission, is the TF already there following it's waypoints and I just need to intersect it at the right time?

If your sub is within twenty miles of a spawning point the group won't spawn. If the TF is already spawned and steaming towards the battle the all you have to do is intercept it.

I'm not familiar with the ME, so how can I find the spawning points?

There is one spawning point, the original one, that's the one you need to be away from. With RSRD most groups spawn near or in port. Other than that you need to be along the waypoint path.

Thanks for that. I thought I had plotted the Car Div path as it rounded San Cristobal, allowed for a three hour time difference since my base shows PH, but I still haven't intersected that group. Gotta keep tryin!

If you haven't rebased to Pearl yet you should still be running on Surabaya time.