After further review...
 

Gonna need to hack sim.cfg anyway, the thermal layer is still too much of a cloaking device, under the layer = Harry Potter cloak of invisibility.

Other thing I noticed one night after resupplying at Spectre 42 was this;

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Sub tender and both cruisers visible from 7500 yards, could you see a periscope at that distance? On radar;

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There's a PT boat next to the tender, can't even see that at 7500 yards. At 80 feet long with a 20 foot beam, a PT boat is a little bigger than a periscope. :up:

No chance for visual at that range. Or radar at that time.

Funny that the US sub radar has an 80 Kyard setting on it, seems to me that would be over the horizon even for a BB. IIRC the range you normally picked up big targets on radar was between 10,000 and 15,000 yards, 5 to 7 1/2 miles. Real life example:

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Pic taken at Harlem Avenue and Lake Street looking toward downtown Chicago, distant building on the far right is Sears Tower. Roughly 9 statute miles away, 15,840 yards. The monstrous antenna masts on top of the building (which are a LOT bigger than a periscope, probably bigger than a fleet boat stood on end) are barely visible at that range.

Sniper, they're several radar mods and fixes, some built into mods, some not. You can play with the heights of radar {min/max} to adjust what height above sea level it will pick up...some other factors involved of course. You can set it just so radar won't pick up your sub at decks awash, nor your scope if that even comes into play.

Can't remember the radar types now, been too long, but one type in game should act as air alone and the stock game has it as air and surface, so it reaches very far with good contact on your sub a long range. Tater has a mod fix for this, but you can open it up and figure it out easily and play with heights until you get it to your liking for your setup.

Yeah, for my purposes the slight reductions in range seem to work well enough, and in February 1942 I seriously doubt any Japanese destroyer would have even a radar detector. I have an SJ, I hacked some files to get me a radar at career start in 1941 because I got tired of doing end-arounds within visual sight with the idiots on watch who sound like parrots reporting the same zigzagging escort every five minutes as a new contact, but completely miss it when he turns toward us, bends on knots and opens fire. My radar guy doesn't have any more sense than the deck watch, "What? It wasn't a NEW contact, was it important to mention he turned around and came back to us at high speed? Wasn't in my standing orders, sir!"

Just a few minutes ago I hit a task force sinking 3 out of 3 BBs, then ducked under the layer (still too easy) and surfaced 10 miles away. Still had them on radar 20 miles north heading north, with me heading east on the surface and distance increasing rapidly I went to ahead standard and headed for base (read the bible but the miracle of the fishes and loaves is beyond my skills, got enough bread to feed the US Army but still only two fish left in the tubes). Then turned on time compression with the closest destroyer 25 miles northwest now, and still headed north while I'm going east. After a few minutes running 2048 X speed I suddenly get WHAM WHAM WE'RE TAKING DAMAGE SIR and there's two destroyers within 3000 yards and more coming at me - the rest of that task force is now 30 miles away but the escorts suddenly decide NOW would be a good time to break off and head 30 miles southeast at high speed on a hunch?! Psychic Friends Network, there's no other rational explanation. Why one of the lubbers in my crew didn't say anything before the shells started hitting IS rational - they already had them on radar, didn't think it was important to mention the range was now closing instead of opening because their only orders are to report NEW contacts. :down:

No habla "TC", what's a high TC? Anyway my latest example ain't about being detected, not from 30 miles. An escort making the occasional sweep a few miles from a convoy/task force is realistic, but for one to make a beeline to exactly where you happen to be 10 or more miles away could only be a coincidence if it happened once - but it happens way too often to be random chance. And 30 miles is either psychic or they had a time machine to go into the future and bring back a Grumman E-2 Hawkeye.

High time compression TC can easily get you killed, moreso if the enemy is within the contact zone. Escorts often make sweeps, sometimes several nms and if you're in TC you can easily get found out and dead before you know it....

Mods vary, but as I recall only the best radar can pick up at the 20nm range, other factors apply, but I've played for years and never had a escort come from 22 nms or more to chase me. Even with my harder settings, I'm generally safe at 12nms from enemy radar and visuals during the day. You have to pay attention if you have contact, planes may spot you or the enemy may change course and head your way, see you, the group turns away, but escorts come on...

Tango Charlie!
 

Thanks, I'm mulling over Tin Can, Terra Cotta, and Toll Collector trying to figure that one out. Yeah, good possibility, after sinking 3 ships I'm leaving the area on the surface, turn on TC (Time Compression, silly me :doh: ) and it goes jerk-jerk-jerk keeping track of course, speed, range and bearing to every life boat and Carley float until they're all out of range. I've also noticed that coming out of TC you get the excitable adolescent screaming in a high pitched voice about radar contact ship sighted we're taking damage sir while the actor wannabe does the stage whisper about passing thermal layer, I suspect that's some kind of buffer the old messages are stored in while TC is on. Be nice if they kept better track of what was important instead. Buggy subroutine, I was sitting on the bottom with TC at 1024 waiting for some sub chasers to go away when I get a machine gun of 100 taking damage reports before TC automatically kicks off - sitting on the bottom apparently triggers the "run aground" program when TC is on.

well, a lot can happen when you're at high TC, so it can take some seconds for the game to catch up when you come out of it...

Yup,

Even the weather and ocean can be messed up by TC, I never go over 512x when going to my patrol area or when I'm on patrol (read somewhere 256x is best but its too slow for me).
When I hit bingo fuel or run out of fish I head home at 1024x and from 680Nm out of Tokyo I warp home at 81..x (max TC) to Pearl.

In 'good conditions' range was given as 12 nm for a BB and 8 nm for a DD for the detection ranges of an SJ set. I have read in a few books that they could sometimes pick up targets at unusually high ranges if the weather conditions formed a 'tunnel' that would keep the radar signal bouncing along the sea with the curvature of the Earth.

Also, they used the radar for navigation and mountains show up, again I have read that sometimes they got echos from the previous pulse showing up on the scope at 120+ thousand yards (e.g. it showed at the 40k point).

Anyway, in game, ships don't spawn until about 36k yards, so there's no use for it to be that high and of course weather and terrain don't show up on it either.

Yeah, that's the one thing that always irritated me about SH4 radar - how hard would it have been to link it to the map to show land masses, and add some "grass" and sea returns in bad weather?

Well, it would have to be a contact and it would put a massive load on your PC.

Psychic Q-ship
 

Southwest of Tokyo Bay in FEB'45, almost no shipping until an Aux gunboat/Q-ship, one of those 2400 ton merchie look alikes w/ two deck guns, ambles up. So I set her up for a shot in broad daylight and calm seas. We were DIW off the aim point with minimal scope showing when she detected at ~1600yds. Had to be on our glass since she has no sonar. We danced around for a while with us trying to set up a shot from the stern tubes, but couldn't do it so I dove and headed south to shake her, but couldn't do it. She pursued and hung around within 1000yds for an hour with us below 100ft. Never heard a ping so don't know how she was tracking us, goofy stuff.

Came back to PD with her 5kyds to the north when a 10,000 tanker comes in fm the NE. We sank her and then a large cargo ship minutes later, but the Q-ship responded to neither of those which were well within sighting distance, 4-5kyds from her. Passable strange.